how to find time at particular timezone from anywhere

Question

I need to know the current time at CDT when my Python script is run. However this script will be run in multiple different timezones so a simple offset won't work. I only need a solution for Linux, but a cross platform solution would be ideal.

Answer 1

pytz or dateutil.tz is the trick here. Basically it's something like this:

>>> from pytz import timezone
>>> mytz = timezone('Europe/Paris')
>>> yourtz = timezone('US/Eastern')

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> now = datetime.now(mytz)
>>> alsonow = now.astimezone(yourtz)

The difficulty actually lies in figuring out which timezone you are in. dateutil.tz is better at that.

>>> from dateutil.tz import tzlocal, gettz
>>> mytz = tzlocal()
>>> yourtz = gettz('US/Eastern')

If you want all the nitty gritty details of why timezones are evil, they are here:

http://regebro.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/python-and-time-zones-fighting-the-beast/

http://regebro.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/python-and-time-zones-part-2-the-beast-returns/

http://regebro.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/thanks-for-the-testing-help-conclusions/

Answer 2

You can use time.gmtime() to get time GMT (UTC) from any machine no matter the timezone, then you can apply your offset.