Can't subtract offset-naive and offset-aware datetimes

user_420123 0
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I have a timezone aware timestamptz field in PostgreSQL. When I pull data from the table, I then want to subtract the time right now so I can get it's age.

The problem I'm having is that both datetime.datetime.now() and datetime.datetime.utcnow() seem to return timezone unaware timestamps, which results in me getting this error:

TypeError: can't subtract offset-naive and offset-aware datetimes

Is there a way to avoid this (preferably without a third-party module being used).

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions, however trying to adjust the timezone seems to give me errors.. so I'm just going to use timezone unaware timestamps in PG and always insert using:

NOW() AT TIME ZONE 'UTC'

That way all my timestamps are UTC by default (even though it's more annoying to do this).

timezone datetime postgresql python
12 Answers
user_933800

You don't need anything outside the std libs

datetime.datetime.now().astimezone()

If you just replace the timezone it will not adjust the time. If your system is already UTC then .replace(tz='UTC') is fine.

>>> x=datetime.datetime.now()
datetime.datetime(2020, 11, 16, 7, 57, 5, 364576)

>>> print(x)
2020-11-16 07:57:05.364576

>>> print(x.astimezone()) 
2020-11-16 07:57:05.364576-07:00

>>> print(x.replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)) # wrong
2020-11-16 07:57:05.364576+00:00
user_3065600

I came up with an ultra-simple solution:

import datetime

def calcEpochSec(dt):
    epochZero = datetime.datetime(1970,1,1,tzinfo = dt.tzinfo)
    return (dt - epochZero).total_seconds()

It works with both timezone-aware and timezone-naive datetime values. And no additional libraries or database workarounds are required.

user_53269540

The most straight forward answer to the question in the title seems to be missing:

naive_date.replace(tzinfo=aware_date.tzinfo) - aware_date
user_37769350

Is there some pressing reason why you can't handle the age calculation in PostgreSQL itself? Something like

select *, age(timeStampField) as timeStampAge from myTable
user_880020
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