In Python, how do you convert seconds since epoch to a `datetime` object?

Question

The time module can be initialized using seconds since epoch:

>>> import time
>>> t1=time.gmtime(1284286794)
>>> t1
time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=10, tm_min=19, 
                 tm_sec=54, tm_wday=6, tm_yday=255, tm_isdst=0)

Is there an elegant way to initialize a datetime.datetime object in the same way?

Answer 1

datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp will do, if you know the time zone, you could produce the same output as with time.gmtime

>>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1284286794)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 12, 11, 19, 54)

or

>>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(1284286794)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 12, 10, 19, 54)

Answer 2

Seconds since epoch to datetime to strftime:

>>> ts_epoch = 1362301382
>>> ts = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts_epoch).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
>>> ts
'2013-03-03 01:03:02'

Answer 3

From the docs, the recommended way of getting a timezone aware datetime object from seconds since epoch is:

Python 3:

from datetime import datetime, timezone
datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp, timezone.utc)

Python 2, using pytz:

from datetime import datetime
import pytz
datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp, pytz.utc)

Answer 4

Note that datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp) and .utcfromtimestamp(timestamp) fail on windows for dates before Jan. 1, 1970 while negative unix timestamps seem to work on unix-based platforms. The docs say this:

"This may raise ValueError, if the timestamp is out of the range of values supported by the platform C gmtime() function. It’s common for this to be restricted to years in 1970 through 2038"

See also Issue1646728

Answer 5

For those that want it ISO 8601 compliant, since the other solutions do not have the T separator nor the time offset (except Meistro's answer):

from datetime import datetime, timezone
result = datetime.fromtimestamp(1463288494, timezone.utc).isoformat('T', 'microseconds')
print(result) # 2016-05-15T05:01:34.000000+00:00

Note, I use fromtimestamp because if I used utcfromtimestamp I would need to chain on .astimezone(...) anyway to get the offset.

If you don't want to go all the way to microseconds you can choose a different unit with the isoformat() method.