Convert an RFC 3339 time to a standard Python timestamp

http://bugs.python.org/issue15873 (duplicate of http://bugs.python.org/issue5207 )

Looks like there isn’t a built-in as of yet.

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/iso8601/ seems to be able to parse iso 8601, which RFC 3339 is a subset of, maybe this could be useful, but again, not built-in.

You don’t include an example, but if you don’t have a Z-offset or timezone, and assuming you don’t want durations but just the basic time, then maybe this will suit you:

import datetime as dt
>>> dt.datetime.strptime('1985-04-12T23:20:50.52', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f')
datetime.datetime(1985, 4, 12, 23, 20, 50, 520000)

The strptime() function was added to the datetime module in Python 2.5 so some people don’t yet know it’s there.

Edit: The time.strptime() function has existed for a while though, and works about the same to give you a struct_time value:

>>> ts = time.strptime('1985-04-12T23:20:50.52', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f')
>>> ts
time.struct_time(tm_year=1985, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=23, tm_min=20, tm_sec=50, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=102, tm_isdst=-1)
>>> time.mktime(ts)
482210450.0

feedparser.py provides robust/extensible way to parse various date formats that may be encountered in real-world atom/rss feeds:

>>> from feedparser import _parse_date as parse_date
>>> parse_date('1985-04-12T23:20:50.52Z')
time.struct_time(tm_year=1985, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=23, tm_min=20,
                 tm_sec=50, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=102, tm_isdst=1)

rfc3339 library: http://henry.precheur.org/python/rfc3339

Came across the awesome dateutil.parser module in another question, and tried it on my RFC3339 problem, and it appears to handle everything I throw at it with more sanity that any of the other responses in this question.

try this, it works fine for me

datetime_obj =  datetime.strptime("2014-01-01T00:00:00Z", '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')

or

datetime_obj = datetime.strptime("Mon, 01 Jun 2015 16:41:40 GMT", '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S GMT')

I struggled with RFC3339 datetime format a lot, but I found a suitable solution to convert date_string <=> datetime_object in both directions.

You need two different external modules, because one of them is is only able to do the conversion in one direction (unfortunately):

first install:

sudo pip install rfc3339
sudo pip install iso8601

then include:

import datetime     # for general datetime object handling
import rfc3339      # for date object -> date string
import iso8601      # for date string -> date object

For not needing to remember which module is for which direction, I wrote two simple helper functions:

def get_date_object(date_string):
  return iso8601.parse_date(date_string)

def get_date_string(date_object):
  return rfc3339.rfc3339(date_object)

which inside your code you can easily use like this:

input_string = '1989-01-01T00:18:07-05:00'
test_date = get_date_object(input_string)
# >>> datetime.datetime(1989, 1, 1, 0, 18, 7, tzinfo=<FixedOffset '-05:00' datetime.timedelta(-1, 68400)>)

test_string = get_date_string(test_date)
# >>> '1989-01-01T00:18:07-05:00'

test_string is input_string # >>> True

Heureka! Now you can easily (haha) use your date strings and date strings in a useable format.

Using Python 3, you can use RegEx to break the RFC 3339 timestamp into its components.
Then, directly create the datetime object, no additional modules needed:

import re
import datetime

def parse_rfc3339(dt):
    broken = re.search(r'([0-9]{4})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})T([0-9]{2}):([0-9]{2}):([0-9]{2})(.([0-9]+))?(Z|([+-][0-9]{2}):([0-9]{2}))', dt)
    return(datetime.datetime(
        year = int(broken.group(1)),
        month = int(broken.group(2)),
        day = int(broken.group(3)),
        hour = int(broken.group(4)),
        minute = int(broken.group(5)),
        second = int(broken.group(6)),
        microsecond = int(broken.group(8) or "0"),
        tzinfo = datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(
            hours = int(broken.group(10) or "0"),
            minutes = int(broken.group(11) or "0")))))

This example theads missing timezones or microseconds as “0” but might need additional error checking.
Cheers, Alex

If you’re using Django, you could use Django’s function parse_datetime:

>>> from django.utils.dateparse import parse_datetime
>>> parse_datetime("2016-07-19T07:30:36+05:00")
datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 19, 7, 30, 36, tzinfo=<django.utils.timezone.FixedOffset object at 0x101c0c1d0>)

The new datetime.fromisoformat(date_string) method which was added in Python 3.7 will parse most RFC 3339 timestamps, including those with time zone offsets. It’s not a full implementation, so be sure to test your use case.

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.fromisoformat('2011-11-04')
datetime.datetime(2011, 11, 4, 0, 0)
>>> datetime.fromisoformat('2011-11-04T00:05:23')
datetime.datetime(2011, 11, 4, 0, 5, 23)
>>> datetime.fromisoformat('2011-11-04 00:05:23.283')
datetime.datetime(2011, 11, 4, 0, 5, 23, 283000)
>>> datetime.fromisoformat('2011-11-04 00:05:23.283+00:00')
datetime.datetime(2011, 11, 4, 0, 5, 23, 283000, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
>>> datetime.fromisoformat('2011-11-04T00:05:23+04:00')   
datetime.datetime(2011, 11, 4, 0, 5, 23,
    tzinfo=datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(seconds=14400)))

I have been doing a deep dive in dateimes and RFC3339 and recently come across the arrow library and have just used and solved my problem:

import arrow

date_string = "2015-11-24 00:00:00+00:00"
my_datetime = arrow.get(date_string).datetime

The simplest solution for me has been dateutil python standart library.

from dateutil.parser import parse

dt = "2020-11-23T11:08:23.022277705Z"
print(parse(dt))

Output:

2020-11-23 11:08:23.022277+00:00

If you don’t need the timezone element, just simply set timezone info to None

print(parse(t).replace(tzinfo=None))

The output is a nice and clean datetime object:

2020-11-23 11:08:23.022277

You could use a Google API Core package. They have a really straightforward Datetime to RFC 3339 conversion function. You can find more info in their docs.

Its usage is as simple as:

from google.api_core.datetime_helpers import to_rfc3339

rfc3339_str = to_rfc3339(datetime.now())

They even have a function that works the other way around from_rfc3339 and from_rfc3339_nanos.