ISO time (ISO 8601) in Python

ISO 8601 allows a compact representation with no separators except for the T, so I like to use this one-liner to get a quick timestamp string:

>>> datetime.datetime.utcnow().strftime("%Y%m%dT%H%M%S.%fZ")
'20180905T140903.591680Z'

If you don't need the microseconds, just leave out the .%f part:

>>> datetime.datetime.utcnow().strftime("%Y%m%dT%H%M%SZ")
'20180905T140903Z'

For local time:

>>> datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%dT%H%M%S")
'20180905T140903'

In general, I recommend you leave the punctuation in. RFC 3339 recommends that style because if everyone uses punctuation, there isn't a risk of things like multiple ISO 8601 strings being sorted in groups on their punctuation. So the one liner for a compliant string would be:

>>> datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")
'2018-09-05T14:09:03Z'

ISO 8601 Time Representation

The international standard ISO 8601 describes a string representation for dates and times. Two simple examples of this format are

2010-12-16 17:22:15
20101216T172215

(which both stand for the 16th of December 2010), but the format also allows for sub-second resolution times and to specify time zones. This format is of course not Python-specific, but it is good for storing dates and times in a portable format. Details about this format can be found in the Markus Kuhn entry.

I recommend use of this format to store times in files.

One way to get the current time in this representation is to use strftime from the time module in the Python standard library:

>>> from time import strftime
>>> strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
'2010-03-03 21:16:45'

You can use the strptime constructor of the datetime class:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.strptime("2010-06-04 21:08:12", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
datetime.datetime(2010, 6, 4, 21, 8, 12)

The most robust is the Egenix mxDateTime module:

>>> from mx.DateTime.ISO import ParseDateTimeUTC
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> x = ParseDateTimeUTC("2010-06-04 21:08:12")
>>> datetime.fromtimestamp(x)
datetime.datetime(2010, 3, 6, 21, 8, 12)

References

• The Python time module documentation

• The Python datetime class documentation

• The Egenix mxDateTime class

For those who are looking for a date-only solution, it is:

import datetime

datetime.date.today().isoformat()

You'll need to use os.stat to get the file creation time and a combination of time.strftime and time.timezone for formatting:

>>> import time
>>> import os
>>> t = os.stat('C:/Path/To/File.txt').st_ctime
>>> t = time.localtime(t)
>>> formatted = time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S', t)
>>> tz = str.format('{0:+06.2f}', float(time.timezone) / 3600)
>>> final = formatted + tz
>>> 
>>> final
'2008-11-24 14:46:08-02.00'

Standard RFC-3339 in milliseconds

I needed the time in this format for a LoRa application so I came up with this, I hope it helps:

from datetime import datetime
from time import strftime


# Get the current time in the format: 2021-03-20T16:51:23.644+01:00
def rfc3339_time_ms():
        datetime_now = datetime.utcnow()
        # Remove the microseconds
        datetime_now_ms = datetime_now.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f")[:-3]
        # Add the timezone as "+/-HHMM", and the colon in "+/-HH:MM"
        datetime_now_ms_tz = datetime_now_ms + strftime("%z")
        rfc3339_ms_now = datetime_now_ms_tz[:-2] + ":" + datetime_now_ms_tz[-2:]
        # print(f"Current time in ms in RFC-3339 format: {rfc3339_ms_now}")
        return rfc3339_ms_now

Adding a small variation to estani's excellent answer

Local to ISO 8601 with TimeZone and no microsecond info (Python 3):

import datetime, time

utc_offset_sec = time.altzone if time.localtime().tm_isdst else time.timezone
utc_offset = datetime.timedelta(seconds=-utc_offset_sec)
datetime.datetime.now().replace(microsecond=0, tzinfo=datetime.timezone(offset=utc_offset)).isoformat()

Sample Output:

'2019-11-06T12:12:06-08:00'

Tested that this output can be parsed by both Javascript Date and C# DateTime/DateTimeOffset

Just make the life simple please:

1. Use UTC time
2. Microsecond
3. one line code

f"{datetime.datetime.utcnow().isoformat()[:-3]}Z"

output:

2022-02-25T02:08:40.684Z