ISO time (ISO 8601) in Python

Question

I have a file. In Python, I would like to take its creation time, and convert it to an ISO time (ISO 8601) string while preserving the fact that it was created in the Eastern Time Zone (ET).

How do I take the file's ctime and convert it to an ISO time string that indicates the Eastern Time Zone (and takes into account daylight savings time, if necessary)?

Answer 1

Local to ISO 8601:

import datetime datetime.datetime.now().isoformat() >>> 2020-03-20T14:28:23.382748 

UTC to ISO 8601:

import datetime datetime.datetime.utcnow().isoformat() >>> 2020-03-20T01:30:08.180856 

Local to ISO 8601 without microsecond:

import datetime datetime.datetime.now().replace(microsecond=0).isoformat() >>> 2020-03-20T14:30:43 

UTC to ISO 8601 with TimeZone information (Python 3):

import datetime datetime.datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc).isoformat() >>> 2020-03-20T01:31:12.467113+00:00 

UTC to ISO 8601 with Local TimeZone information without microsecond (Python 3):

import datetime datetime.datetime.now().astimezone().replace(microsecond=0).isoformat() >>> 2020-03-20T14:31:43+13:00 

Local to ISO 8601 with TimeZone information (Python 3):

import datetime datetime.datetime.now().astimezone().isoformat() >>> 2020-03-20T14:32:16.458361+13:00 

Notice there is a bug when using astimezone() on utc time. This gives an incorrect result:

datetime.datetime.utcnow().astimezone().isoformat() #Incorrect result 

For Python 2, see and use pytz.

Answer 2

Here is what I use to convert to the XSD datetime format:

from datetime import datetime datetime.now().replace(microsecond=0).isoformat() # You get your ISO string 

I came across this question when looking for the XSD date time format (xs:dateTime). I needed to remove the microseconds from isoformat.