How do I get the current time?

Use datetime:

>>> import datetime
>>> now = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> now
datetime.datetime(2009, 1, 6, 15, 8, 24, 78915)
>>> print(now)
2009-01-06 15:08:24.789150

For just the clock time without the date:

>>> now.time()
datetime.time(15, 8, 24, 78915)
>>> print(now.time())
15:08:24.789150

To save typing, you can import the datetime object from the datetime module:

>>> from datetime import datetime

Then remove the prefix datetime. from all of the above.

Use time.strftime():

>>> from time import gmtime, strftime
>>> strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", gmtime())
'2009-01-05 22:14:39'

Do

from time import time

t = time()

• t - float number, good for time interval measurement.

There is some difference for Unix and Windows platforms.

>>> from time import gmtime, strftime
>>> strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %X +0000", gmtime())
'Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:54:56 +0000'

That outputs the current GMT in the specified format. There is also a localtime() method.

This page has more details.

If you need current time as a time object:

>>> import datetime
>>> now = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> datetime.time(now.hour, now.minute, now.second)
datetime.time(11, 23, 44)

Using pandas to get the current time, kind of overkilling the problem at hand:

import pandas as pd
print(pd.datetime.now())
print(pd.datetime.now().date())
print(pd.datetime.now().year)
print(pd.datetime.now().month)
print(pd.datetime.now().day)
print(pd.datetime.now().hour)
print(pd.datetime.now().minute)
print(pd.datetime.now().second)
print(pd.datetime.now().microsecond)

Output:

2017-09-22 12:44:56.092642
2017-09-22
2017
9
22
12
44
56
92693

if you are using numpy already then directly you can use numpy.datetime64() function.

import numpy as np
str(np.datetime64('now'))

for only date:

str(np.datetime64('today'))

or, if you are using pandas already then you can use pandas.to_datetime() function

import pandas as pd
str(pd.to_datetime('now'))

or,

str(pd.to_datetime('today'))

This question doesn't need a new answer just for the sake of it ... a shiny new-ish toy/module, however, is enough justification. That being the Pendulum library, which appears to do the sort of things which arrow attempted, except without the inherent flaws and bugs which beset arrow.

For instance, the answer to the original question:

>>> import pendulum
>>> print(pendulum.now())
2018-08-14T05:29:28.315802+10:00
>>> print(pendulum.now('utc'))
2018-08-13T19:29:35.051023+00:00

There's a lot of standards which need addressing, including multiple RFCs and ISOs, to worry about. Ever get them mixed up; not to worry, take a little look into dir(pendulum.constants) There's a bit more than RFC and ISO formats there, though.

When we say local, though what do we mean? Well I mean:

>>> print(pendulum.now().timezone_name)
Australia/Melbourne
>>>

Presumably most of the rest of you mean somewhere else.

And on it goes. Long story short: Pendulum attempts to do for date and time what requests did for HTTP. It's worth consideration, particularly for both its ease of use and extensive documentation.

Current time of a timezone

from datetime import datetime
import pytz

tz_NY = pytz.timezone('America/New_York') 
datetime_NY = datetime.now(tz_NY)
print("NY time:", datetime_NY.strftime("%H:%M:%S"))

tz_London = pytz.timezone('Europe/London')
datetime_London = datetime.now(tz_London)
print("London time:", datetime_London.strftime("%H:%M:%S"))

tz_India = pytz.timezone('Asia/India')
datetime_India = datetime.now(tz_India)
print("India time:", datetime_India.strftime("%H:%M:%S"))

#list timezones
pytz.all_timezones

If you just want the current timestamp in ms (for example, to measure execution time), you can also use the "timeit" module:

import timeit
start_time = timeit.default_timer()
do_stuff_you_want_to_measure()
end_time = timeit.default_timer()
print("Elapsed time: {}".format(end_time - start_time))

You can try the following

import datetime

now = datetime.datetime.now()
print(now)

or

import datetime

now = datetime.datetime.now()
print(now.strftime("%Y-%b-%d, %A %I:%M:%S"))

Because no one has mentioned it yet, and this is something I ran into recently... a pytz timezone's fromutc() method combined with datetime's utcnow() is the best way I've found to get a useful current time (and date) in any timezone.

from datetime import datetime

import pytz


JST = pytz.timezone("Asia/Tokyo")


local_time = JST.fromutc(datetime.utcnow())

If all you want is the time, you can then get that with local_time.time().

import datetime

todays_date = datetime.date.today()
print(todays_date)
>>> 2019-10-12

# adding strftime will remove the seconds
current_time = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M')
print(current_time)
>>> 23:38

Method1: Getting Current Date and Time from system datetime

The datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and times.

Code

from datetime import datetime,date

print("Date: "+str(date.today().year)+"-"+str(date.today().month)+"-"+str(date.today().day))
print("Year: "+str(date.today().year))
print("Month: "+str(date.today().month))
print("Day: "+str(date.today().day)+"\n")

print("Time: "+str(datetime.today().hour)+":"+str(datetime.today().minute)+":"+str(datetime.today().second))
print("Hour: "+str(datetime.today().hour))
print("Minute: "+str(datetime.today().minute))
print("Second: "+str(datetime.today().second))
print("MilliSecond: "+str(datetime.today().microsecond))

Output will be like

Date: 2020-4-18
Year: 2020
Month: 4
Day: 18

Time: 19:30:5
Hour: 19
Minute: 30
Second: 5
MilliSecond: 836071

Method2: Getting Current Date and Time if Network is available

urllib package helps us to handle the url's that means webpages. Here we collects data from the webpage http://just-the-time.appspot.com/ and parses dateime from the webpage using the package dateparser.

Code

from urllib.request import urlopen
import dateparser

time_url = urlopen(u'http://just-the-time.appspot.com/')
datetime = time_url.read().decode("utf-8", errors="ignore").split(' ')[:-1]
date = datetime[0]
time = datetime[1]

print("Date: "+str(date))
print("Year: "+str(date.split('-')[0]))
print("Month: "+str(date.split('-')[1]))
print("Day: "+str(date.split('-')[2])+'\n')

print("Time: "+str(time))
print("Hour: "+str(time.split(':')[0]))
print("Minute: "+str(time.split(':')[1]))
print("Second: "+str(time.split(':')[2]))

Output will be like

Date: 2020-04-18
Year: 2020
Month: 04
Day: 18

Time: 14:17:10
Hour: 14
Minute: 17
Second: 10

Method3: Getting Current Date and Time from Local Time of the Machine

Python's time module provides a function for getting local time from the number of seconds elapsed since the epoch called localtime(). ctime() function takes seconds passed since epoch as an argument and returns a string representing local time.

Code

from time import time, ctime
datetime = ctime(time()).split(' ')

print("Date: "+str(datetime[4])+"-"+str(datetime[1])+"-"+str(datetime[2]))
print("Year: "+str(datetime[4]))
print("Month: "+str(datetime[1]))
print("Day: "+str(datetime[2]))
print("Week Day: "+str(datetime[0])+'\n')

print("Time: "+str(datetime[3]))
print("Hour: "+str(datetime[3]).split(':')[0])
print("Minute: "+str(datetime[3]).split(':')[1])
print("Second: "+str(datetime[3]).split(':')[2])

Output will be like

Date: 2020-Apr-18
Year: 2020
Month: Apr
Day: 18
Week Day: Sat

Time: 19:30:20
Hour: 19
Minute: 30
Second: 20

You can do so using ctime():

from time import time, ctime
t = time()
ctime(t)

output:

Sat Sep 14 21:27:08 2019

These outputs are different because the timestamp returned by ctime() depends on your geographical location.

try this one:-

from datetime import datetime

now = datetime.now()

current_time = now.strftime("%H:%M:%S")
print("Current Time =", current_time)

This question is for Python but since Django is one of the most widely used frameworks for Python, its important to note that if you are using Django you can always use timezone.now() instead of datetime.datetime.now(). The former is timezone 'aware' while the latter is not.

See this SO answer and the Django doc for details and rationale behind timezone.now().

from django.utils import timezone

now = timezone.now()

This is so simple. Try:

import datetime
date_time = str(datetime.datetime.now())
date = date_time.split()[0]
time = date_time.split()[1]

from time import ctime

// Day {Mon,Tue,..}
print ctime().split()[0]
// Month {Jan, Feb,..}
print ctime().split()[1]
// Date {1,2,..}
print ctime().split()[2]
// HH:MM:SS
print ctime().split()[3]
// Year {2018,..}
print ctime().split()[4]

When you call ctime() it will convert seconds to string in format 'Day Month Date HH:MM:SS Year' (for example: 'Wed January 17 16:53:22 2018'), then you call split() method that will make a list from your string ['Wed','Jan','17','16:56:45','2018'] (default delimeter is space).

Brackets are used to 'select' wanted argument in list.

One should call just one code line. One should not call them like I did, that was just an example, because in some cases you will get different values, rare but not impossible cases.

Get current date time attributes:

import datetime

currentDT = datetime.datetime.now()

print ("Current Year is: %d" % currentDT.year)
print ("Current Month is: %d" % currentDT.month)
print ("Current Day is: %d" % currentDT.day)
print ("Current Hour is: %d" % currentDT.hour)
print ("Current Minute is: %d" % currentDT.minute)
print ("Current Second is: %d" % currentDT.second)
print ("Current Microsecond is: %d" % currentDT.microsecond)


#!/usr/bin/python
import time;

ticks = time.time()
print "Number of ticks since "12:00am, Jan 1, 1970":", ticks

First import the datetime module from datetime

from datetime import datetime

Then print the current time as 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss'

print(str(datetime.now())

To get only the time in the form 'hh:mm:ss' where ss stands for the full number of seconds plus the fraction of seconds elapsed, just do;

print(str(datetime.now()[11:])

Converting the datetime.now() to a string yields an answer that is in the format that feels like the regular DATES AND TIMES we are used to.

If you using it for django datetime sometimes won't work on server so I recommend using timezone

But for use django timezone you should set your country timezone code in your settings.py

TIME_ZONE = 'Asia/Tashkent'

Then you can use it

from django.utils import timezone

timezone.now() // for date time

timezone.now().year // for yaer

timezone.now().month // for month

timezone.now().day // for day 

timezone.now().date // for date

timezone.now().hour // for hour

timezone.now().weekday // for minute

or if you want use on python

import time

time.strftime('%X') // '13:12:47'

time.strftime('%x') // '01/20/22'

time.strftime('%d') // '20' day

time.strftime('%m') // '01' month

time.strftime('%y') // '20' year

time.strftime('%H') // '01' hour

time.strftime('%M') // '01' minute

time.strftime('%m') // '01' second

The time module can import all sorts of time stuff, inculduing sleep and other types of stuff including - the current time type

import time
time.strftime("%T", time.localtime())

The output should look like this

05:46:33
11:22:56
13:44:55
22:33:44
00:00:00

we can accomplish that Using datetime module

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> now = datetime.now() #get a datetime object containing current date and time
>>> current_time = now.strftime("%H:%M:%S") #created a string representing current time
>>> print("Current Time =", current_time)
Current Time = 17:56:54

In addition, we can get the current time of time zome using pytZ module.

>>> from pytz import timezone
>>> import pytz
>>> eastern = timezone('US/Eastern')
>>> eastern.zone
'US/Eastern'
>>> amsterdam = timezone('Europe/Amsterdam')
>>> datetime_eu = datetime.now(amsterdam)
>>> print("Europe time::", datetime_eu.strftime("%H:%M:%S"))
Europe time:: 14:45:31

import datetime

print('date='+datetime.datetime.now().__str__().split(' ')[0]+' '+'time='+datetime.datetime.now().__str__().split(' ')[1]

Since Qt is used extensively,

from PyQt5 import QDateTime
print(QDateTime.currentDateTime().__str__().split('(')[1].rstrip(')'))

From Python 3.9, the zoneinfo module can be used for getting timezones rather than using a third party library.

To get the current time in a particular timezone:

from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo

datetime.now(tz=ZoneInfo("Europe/Amsterdam"))

If you use pandas a lot you can use Timestamp, which is the equivalent of Python’s Datetime:

In [1]: import pandas as pd

In [2]: pd.Timestamp.now()
Out[2]: Timestamp('2022-06-21 21:52:50.568788')

And just the time:

In [3]: pd.Timestamp.now().strftime("%H:%M:%S")
Out[3]: '21:53:01'

If you want the time for purpose of timing function calls, then you want time.perf_counter().

start_time = time.perf_counter()
expensive_function()
time_taken = time.perf_counter() - start_time
print(f'expensive_function() took {round(time_taken,2)}s')

time.perf_counter() → float

Return the value (in fractional seconds) of a performance counter, i.e. a clock with the highest available resolution to measure a short duration. It does include time elapsed during sleep and is system-wide. The reference point of the returned value is undefined, so that only the difference between the results of consecutive calls is valid.

New in version 3.3.

---

time.perf_counter_ns() → int

Similar to perf_counter(), but return time as nanoseconds.

New in version 3.7.

• https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html#time.perf_counter

Attributes of now() can be used to get the current time in python:

# importing datetime module for now()
import datetime
    
# using now() to get current time
current_time = datetime.datetime.now()
    
# Printing attributes of now().
print ("The attributes of now() are : ")
    
print ("Year : ", end = "")
print (current_time.year)
    
print ("Month : ", end = "")
print (current_time.month)
    
print ("Day : ", end = "")
print (current_time.day)
    
print ("Hour : ", end = "")
print (current_time.hour)
    
print ("Minute : ", end = "")
print (current_time.minute)
    
print ("Second : ", end = "")
print (current_time.second)
    
print ("Microsecond : ", end = "")
print (current_time.microsecond)

Gets the current time and converts it to string:

from datetime import datetime
datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

Here's the code which will only show time according to your question:

 from datetime import datetime
 time= datetime.now()
 b = time.strftime("%H:%M:%S")
 print(b)

• Used datetime.now() to get the current date and time.
• Then used .strftime to get desired value i.e time only.

strftime is used to retrieve the desired output or to change the default format according to our need.

Use this method for UTC DateTime, local Date-Time, and convert am and pm

import pytz
from datetime import datetime

#UTC Time
print("UTC Date and time")
epoch: datetime =datetime.now().replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc)
print(epoch)

#local date and time
print("Local Date and time")
today = datetime.now()
local_time = today.strftime("%Y-%M-%d:%H:%M:%S")
print(local_time)

#convert time to AM PM format
print("Date and time AM and PM")
now = today.strftime("%Y-%M-%d:%I:%M %p")
print(now)

There are so many complex solutions here it could be confusing for a beginner. I find this is the most simple solution to the question - as it just returns the current time as asked (no frills):

import datetime

time = datetime.datetime.now()

display_time = time.strftime("%H:%M")
print(display_time)

If you wanted more detail back than just the current time, you can do what some others have suggested here:

import datetime

time = datetime.datetime.now()
print(time)

Although this approach is shorter to write, it returns the current date and milliseconds as well, which may not be required when simply looking to return the current time.

This should work

import time

now = datetime.now()
current_time = now.strftime("%H:%M:%S")
print("The current time is", current_time)