Print current UTC datetime with special format

Question

Pretty simple, but I'm a python newbie. I'm trying to print the current UTC date AND time with special format:

Python 2.6.6

import datetime, time
print time.strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y", datetime.datetime.utcnow())

TypeError: argument must be 9-item sequence, not datetime.datetime

Answer 1

utcnow() returns an object; you should call .strftime on that object:

>>> datetime.datetime.utcnow()
datetime.datetime(2014, 10, 4, 13, 0, 2, 749890)
>>> datetime.datetime.utcnow().strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y")
'Sat Oct 04 13:00:16  2014'

or, pass the object as the first argument of datetime.datetime.strftime:

>>> type(datetime.datetime.utcnow())
<class 'datetime.datetime'>
>>> datetime.datetime.strftime(datetime.datetime.utcnow(), "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y")
'Sat Oct 04 13:00:16  2014'

Answer 2

time.strftime() only takes time.struct_time-like time tuples, not datetime objects.

Use the datetime.strftime() method instead:

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.utcnow().strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y")
'Sat Oct 04 13:00:36  2014'

but note that in Python 2.6 no timezone objects are included so nothing is printed for the %Z; the object returned by datetime.datetime.utcnow() is naive (has no timezone object associated with it).

Since you are using utcnow(), just include the timezone manually:

>>> datetime.datetime.utcnow().strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S UTC %Y")
'Sat Oct 04 13:00:36 UTC 2014'