How to convert timezone to country code in Python?

Question

I used this

from pytz import country_timezones

But It doesn't include below timezones

Africa/Asmera, Africa/Timbuktu, America/Argentina/ComodRivadavia, America/Atka, America/Buenos_Aires, America/Catamarca, America/Coral_Harbour, America/Cordoba, America/Ensenada, America/Fort_Wayne, America/Indianapolis, America/Jujuy, America/Knox_IN, America/Louisville, America/Mendoza, America/Montreal, America/Porto_Acre, America/Rosario, America/Shiprock, America/Virgin, Antarctica/South_Pole, Asia/Ashkhabad, Asia/Calcutta, Asia/Chongqing, Asia/Chungking, Asia/Dacca, Asia/Harbin, Asia/Istanbul, Asia/Kashgar, Asia/Katmandu, Asia/Macao, Asia/Saigon, Asia/Tel_Aviv, Asia/Thimbu, Asia/Ujung_Pandang, Asia/Ulan_Bator, Atlantic/Faeroe, Atlantic/Jan_Mayen, Australia/ACT, Australia/Canberra, Australia/LHI, Australia/NSW, Australia/North, Australia/Queensland, Australia/South, Australia/Tasmania, Australia/Victoria, Australia/West, Australia/Yancowinna, Brazil/Acre, Brazil/DeNoronha, Brazil/East, Brazil/West, CET, CST6CDT, Canada/Atlantic, Canada/Central, Canada/East-Saskatchewan, Canada/Eastern, Canada/Mountain, Canada/Newfoundland, Canada/Pacific, Canada/Saskatchewan, Canada/Yukon, Chile/Continental, Chile/EasterIsland, Cuba, EET, EST, EST5EDT, Egypt, Eire, Europe/Belfast, Europe/Nicosia, Europe/Tiraspol, GB, GB-Eire, Greenwich, HST, Hongkong, Iceland, Iran, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kwajalein, Libya, MET, MST, MST7MDT, Mexico/BajaNorte, Mexico/BajaSur, Mexico/General, NZ, NZ-CHAT, Navajo, PRC, PST8PDT, Pacific/Ponape, Pacific/Samoa, Pacific/Truk, Pacific/Yap, Poland, Portugal, ROC, ROK, Singapore, Turkey, UCT, US/Alaska, US/Aleutian, US/Arizona, US/Central, US/East-Indiana, US/Eastern, US/Hawaii, US/Indiana-Starke, US/Michigan, US/Mountain, US/Pacific, US/Samoa, UTC, Universal, W-SU, WET, Zulu

How can I convert these timezones to country code?

Many countries can have the same timezone, I don't think you can convert a timezone to a country code just like that — Morb
I know, I just want to figure out that except kind of multi-area's timezone. like "Asia/Macao" — yountae.kang
@Morb Also, if you're in Russia or the U.S. for example, the opposite can be true: Many timezones in one country — namezero
True. I guess there are some libs out there that can help you — Morb
All of those timezones are either deprecated or historical timezones. Some are specified as links to current timezones in the Olson database, others as unique timezones that just aren't in use anymore, and I think some aren't even in the database at all. But regardless, they're not in use by any country, and therefore what you're asking for is impossible: you can't get "the country that uses Zulu" if no country uses Zulu. — abarnert

abarnert abarnert · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-29T09:54:05

You can't do what you want. Or, you can, but you'll get the results you're getting, not the results you want. Briefly, if you ask for "the country that uses Zulu", and no country uses Zulu, you won't be able to find anything. In more detail…

As the docs on Country Information say:

A mechanism is provided to access the timezones commonly in use for a particular country, looked up using the ISO 3166 country code.

However, "deprecated" zones like America/Buenos_Aires and "historical" zones like US/Pacific aren't in use in any particular country. Many of them do happen to be aliases for timezones that are in use in some country, like America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires and America/Los_Angeles, respectively, but that doesn't do you any good, because pytz doesn't expose that information. You could file an enhancement request against pytz to add that in a future version, if you think it's important.

At any rate, this is how you can identify the countries that use a given timezone, like this:

{country for country, timezones in country_timezones.items()
 if timezone in timezones}

If you need to do lots of these lookups, you can of course build your own dict to make it faster and simpler:

timezone_countries = {}
for country, timezones in country_timezones.items():
    for timezone in timezones:
        timezone_countries.setdefault(timezone, set()).add(country)

And now it's just:

timezone_countries[timezone]

But either way, you may get an empty set, or a set of 3 countries, instead of 1. If the database actually says that there are 0 or 3 countries that use that timezone, that's what you're going to get.

How to convert timezone to country code in Python?

1 Answers