How to get the file modification date in UTC from Python

Question

I want to get the modification date of a file in UTC from Python. The following code returns dates in my Linux configured time zone (GMT-5). I want it in UTC. Or how do I get the os configured time zone to convert it with pytz ?

$ python Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Apr 16 2010, 13:09:56)  [GCC 4.4.3] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> from datetime import datetime >>> import os >>> dt=os.path.getmtime('/home/user/.bashrc') >>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(dt) datetime(2012, 5, 30, 21, 18, 10) 

Thanks

Answer 1

Try datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp

import datetime import os dt=os.path.getmtime('/home/me/.bashrc') print (datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(dt)) print (datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(dt)) 

Answer 2

Use your local timezone in place of "America/New_York" and the following should do the trick.

In [11]: import datetime, pytz  In [12]: right_now = datetime.datetime.now()  In [13]: right_now_utc = right_now.replace(tzinfo=pytz.timezone("America/New_York")).astimezone(pytz.utc)  In [14]: right_now Out[14]: datetime.datetime(2012, 7, 9, 20, 31, 21, 999536)  In [15]: right_now_utc Out[15]: datetime.datetime(2012, 7, 10, 1, 31, 21, 999536, tzinfo=<UTC>)