How do I retrieve UTC time in Python?

Question

What would be the equivalent of time.ctime() for UTC time?

Currently, if I enter time.ctime() in the interpreter, I get this:

'Mon Feb  5 17:24:48 2018'

This returns the local time and I would like to know how to get time in the same format except in UTC.

Edit: It's time.asctime(time.gmtime())

possibly duplicate of [How to get UTC time in Python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15940280/how-to-get-utc-time-in-python) — Vikas Periyadath, Feb 05 '18 at 12:02
Possible duplicate of [How do I convert local time to UTC in Python?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79797/how-do-i-convert-local-time-to-utc-in-python) — Rakesh, Feb 05 '18 at 12:04

khelwood · Answer 1 · 2018-02-05T12:10:45.220

4

time.gmtime() returns an object representing the utctime.

To get it into the same format as time.ctime, you can use time.asctime().

>>> time.asctime(time.gmtime())
'Mon Feb  5 12:03:39 2018'

edited Feb 05 '18 at 12:10

answered Feb 05 '18 at 12:08

khelwood

jpp · Answer 2 · 2018-02-05T12:05:11.487

1

This should work:

import datetime

utc = datetime.datetime.utcnow()
# datetime.datetime(2018, 2, 5, 12, 2, 56, 678723)

str(utc)
# '2018-02-05 12:05:10.617973'

edited Feb 05 '18 at 12:05

answered Feb 05 '18 at 12:03

jpp

pandas might be a bit overkill here. You can just use `str(utc)` to get a string – Farhan.K Feb 05 '18 at 12:04
@Farhan.K, noted / updated. Only used `pandas` because it formats nicely without losing structure. – jpp Feb 05 '18 at 12:05

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 05 '18 at 12:06

1

import datetime
print(datetime.datetime.utcnow())

2018-02-05 12:05:53.329809

answered Feb 05 '18 at 12:06

A_emperio

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 05 '18 at 12:06

1

Below is the code where you can select any timezone:

from datetime import datetime, timezone
utc_dt = datetime.now(timezone.utc)

answered Feb 05 '18 at 12:06

gB08

4 Answers4