JavaScript timestamp to Python datetime conversion

Question

To get timestamp in JavaScript we use

var ts = new Date().getTime() 

What is the proper way to convert it to a Python datetime so far I use the following code

>>> jsts = 1335205804950 >>> dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(jsts/1000) >>> dt datetime.datetime(2012, 4, 24, 0, 30, 4) 

I divide timestamp by 1000 because I get error like

ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last) 1 d = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(a) ValueError: year is out of range 

Sultan.

Answer 1

Your current method is correct, dividing by 1000 is necessary because your JavaScript returns the timestamp in milliseconds, and datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp() expects a timestamp in seconds.

To preserve the millisecond accuracy you can divide by 1000.0, so you are using float division instead of integer division:

>>> dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(jsts/1000.0) >>> dt datetime.datetime(2012, 4, 23, 11, 30, 4, 950000) 

Answer 2

I've had the same issue, thanks to @andrew-clark for the answer, i've build a small example to handle both cases:

     try:         # when timestamp is in seconds         date = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)     except (ValueError):         # when timestamp is in miliseconds         date = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp / 1000)