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What is the easiest way to get current GMT time in Unix timestamp format?

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How do I get GMT timestamp?

Use the getTime() method to get a GMT timestamp, e.g. new Date(). getTime() . The method returns the number of milliseconds since the Unix Epoch and always uses UTC for time representation. UTC shares the same current time with GMT.

How do I get the current Unix timestamp?

To find the unix current timestamp use the %s option in the date command. The %s option calculates unix timestamp by finding the number of seconds between the current date and unix epoch.

Is Unix timestamp A GMT?

Unix timestamps are always based on UTC (otherwise known as GMT).

What timezone zone is Unix timestamp?

Notice that UNIX Epoch is UTC so it identifies without errors a specific moment in time. Never ask about the timezone of a UNIX epoch timestamp, it is UTC by definition.


I would use time.time() to get a timestamp in seconds since the epoch.

import time

time.time()

Output:

1369550494.884832

For the standard CPython implementation on most platforms this will return a UTC value.


import time

int(time.time()) 

Output:

1521462189

Does this help?

from datetime import datetime
import calendar

d = datetime.utcnow()
unixtime = calendar.timegm(d.utctimetuple())
print unixtime

How to convert Python UTC datetime object to UNIX timestamp


python2 and python3

it is good to use time module

import time
int(time.time())

1573708436

you can also use datetime module, but when you use strftime('%s'), but strftime convert time to your local time!

python2

from datetime import datetime
datetime.utcnow().strftime('%s')

python3

from datetime import datetime
datetime.utcnow().timestamp()

Python 3 seconds with microsecond decimal resolution:

from datetime import datetime
print(datetime.now().timestamp())

Python 3 integer seconds:

print(int(datetime.now().timestamp()))

WARNING on datetime.utcnow().timestamp()!

datetime.utcnow() is a non-timezone aware object. See reference: https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#aware-and-naive-objects

For something like 1am UTC:

from datetime import timezone
print(datetime(1970,1,1,1,0,tzinfo=timezone.utc).timestamp())

or

print(datetime.fromisoformat('1970-01-01T01:00:00+00:00').timestamp())

if you remove the tzinfo=timezone.utc or +00:00, you'll get results dependent on your current local time. Ex: 1am on Jan 1st 1970 in your current timezone - which could be legitimate - for example, if you want the timestamp of the instant when you were born, you should use the timezone you were born in. However, the timestamp from datetime.utcnow().timestamp() is neither the current instant in local time nor UTC. For example, I'm in GMT-7:00 right now, and datetime.utcnow().timestamp() gives a timestamp from 7 hours in the future!


Or just simply using the datetime standard module

In [2]: from datetime import timezone, datetime
   ...: int(datetime.now(tz=timezone.utc).timestamp() * 1000)
   ...: 
Out[2]: 1514901741720

You can truncate or multiply depending on the resolution you want. This example is outputting millis.

If you want a proper Unix timestamp (in seconds) remove the * 1000


At least in python3, this works:

>>> datetime.strftime(datetime.utcnow(), "%s")
'1587503279'