How to get current time python

Python How to Get the Current Time

Artturi Jalli

To get the current time in Python:

For example, here is a simple piece of code to get the current time:

This displays the current time in HH:MM:SS format:

In this guide, you will learn how to get the current time in different formats and contexts in Python.

Table of Contents

Current Time in Python

Milliseconds

Milliseconds means one-thousandth (1/1000) of a second.

To get the current time in milliseconds in Python:

Seconds

To get the current time in seconds in Python:

Local Date and Time

To get the current local date and time in Python:

Current Timezone

To get the current local timezone in Python:

I am at the Eastern European Summer Time, so I get:

Or as a shorthand:

Current Epoch/Unix Timestamp

The epoch time / UNIX time refers to how many seconds have passed since Jan 1st, 1970.

To get the current epoch/UNIX timestamp in Python:

UTC Time

To get the current time in UTC time format in Python:

ISO Time

The ISO 8601 (International Organization for Standardization) is a standard way to express time.

The ISO 8601 follows the format T[hh]:[mm]:[ss].

To get the current time in ISO format in Python:

GMT Time

The GMT or Greenwich Mean Time is the solar time observed in Greenwich, London.

To get the current GMT time in Python:

Years, Months, Days, Hours, Minutes, and Seconds

To extract years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds in Python:

Conclusion

Today you learned how to get the current time in Python in different situations, timezones, and formats.

Thanks for reading. I hope you found what you were looking for.

How to Get the Current Time in Python with Datetime

In your Python applications, you might want to work with time to add functionalities like timestamps, check the time of a user’s activity, and more.

With the datetime module, you can get the current date and time, or the current date and time in a particular time zone.

In this article, I will show you how to get the current time in Python with the datetime module. I will also show you how to get the current time in any timezone of the world.

Table of Contents

How to Get the Current Time with the datetime Module

The first thing you have to do is to import the datetime module like this:

The next thing you can do to quickly get the current date and time is to use the datetime.now() function from the datetime module:

To get the current time in particular, you can use the strftime() method and pass into it the string ”%H:%M:%S” representing hours, minutes, and seconds.

This would give you the current time in a 24Hour format:

Attributes of the datetime.now() Function

The datetime.now function has several attributes with which you can get the year, month, week, day, hour, minute, and second of the current date.

The snippet of code below prints all the values of the attributes to the terminal:

How to Get the Current Time of a Timezone with datetime

You can install the pytz module from pip like this:
pip install pytz

The first thing you have to do is import both the datetime and pytz modules:

You can then check for all available timezones with the snippet below:

In the snippet of code below, I was able to get the time in New York:

How was I able to get the current time in New York?

Conclusion

As shown in this article, the datetime module is very handy in working with time and dates, and subsequently getting the current time in your locale.

When combined with the pytz module that you can install from pip, you can also use it to get the current time in any timezone of the world.

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How To Get Current Time In Python – A Definitive Guide

In any application, getting current time is useful when you want to log the time of any specific event. For example, when a user is logged into the system is important to track the usage of the application.

You can get the current time in python using datetime.now().strftime(«%H:%M:%S») from the DateTime module.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to get the current time in python using the DateTime library and time module. You’ll also learn how to get different times in different formats.

If You’re in Hurry…

You can use the below code snippet to get the current time in python.

First, use the datetime.now() from the DateTime library and then format it using the strftime(«%H:%M:%S») to get only the time information.

Snippet

When you print the current_time object, you’ll see the current time in the 24H format as shown below.

Output

If You Want to Understand Details, Read on…

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the different methods available to get the current time and how to format it in different ways.

Table of Contents

Using Datetime Module

In this section, you’ll learn how to use the Datetime module to get the current time in python. It is available in python by default.

You can use the now() method from the Datetime object to get the current time. This returns the complete date and time information in your current Locale. After getting this, you can format the value using the strftime() method to fetch only the time information.

Use the below snippet to get the current time.

Snippet

When you print the current time object, you’ll get the time printed in the 24H format. To convert it to 12H format read this answer.

Output

This is how you can use the DateTime module to get the current time in python.

Using Time Module

In this section, you’ll learn how to get the current time using the time module. It provides various methods for time-related functionalities. It is available in python by default.

You can use the time.localtime() method to get the time from the time module. This will return the current time of your Locale.

This also returns the complete date and time information which can be formatted using the strftime() to display only the time as shown below.

Snippet

When you print the current time, you can see that the current time is printed in a 24H format. To convert it to 12H format read this answer.

Output

This is how you can get the current time in your locale using the time module.

Get Current Time Of a Timezone

You can get the current time of a specific timezone by using the pytz module and the DateTime module.

This library is available in Python since version 2.4. However, if it’s not available, you can install it by using the following code snippet.

You can check out all the available time zones by using the below snippet.

Snippet

You’ll see the available time zones as a list.

Output

To get the current time of a timezone, you need to create a timezone object by using the pytz.timezone() method and pass it to the datetime.now() method. Then, it’ll return the current time of that specific timezone.

For example, to get the time of the timezone Asia/Kolkata, use the below code.

Snippet

When you print the time, you’ll get the time of the specific timezone printed in 24H format.

Output

This is how you can get the current time of a specific timezone.

Get Current Time in Milliseconds

Getting current time in milliseconds can be useful when you need to track the time in most granular details.

You can get the current time in milliseconds in python by multiplying the current time X 100.

Use the below snippet to get the current time in milliseconds.

Snippet

Output

This is how you can get the current time in milliseconds.

Get Current Time in Nanoseconds

Getting current time in nanoseconds is useful when you want to get time granular than that of the milliseconds.

You can get the current time in Nanoseonds by using the time.time_ns() method. It is available since python 3.7.

Use the below snippet to get the current time in nanoseconds.

Snippet

Output

This is how you can get the current time in python in nanoseconds.

Get Current Time in UTC

When you’re working with applications that have global users, it’s better to deal with the time in UTC format for logging the events. In this way, you can display the time inappropriate time zones of the specific users when accessing the logs.

What is UTC?

It is a Coordinated universal time standard by which the world regulates the clock and time.

You can get the current time in UTC by using the datetime.utcnow() method.

Use the below snippet to get the current time in UTC.

Snippet

Output

Get Current Time in Epoch

Epoch time is widely used in operating systems and file formats. An epoch is a date and time from which a computer measures system time.

Use the below snippet to get the current time in the epoch.

Snippet

Output

Get Current Time in String Format

now() method in the DateTime module returns the time in the date-time format. You need to convert it into a string for logging it.

You can get the current time in string format by using the datetime.now().strftime(“%H:%M:%S”).

Use the below snippet to get the time in the String format.

Snippet

Output

Get Current Time in Hours

You can get the current time in hours by using the now.hour attribute of the DateTime object.

Use the below snippet to get the current time in hours.

Snippet

Output

Get Current Time in Minutes

You can get the current time in hours by using the now.minute attribute of the DateTime object.

Use the below snippet to get the current time in minutes.

Snippet

Output

Get Current Time in Seconds

You can get the current time in hours by using the now.second attribute of the DateTime object.

Use the below snippet to get the current time in seconds.

Snippet

Output

This is how you can get the current time in minutes or hours or seconds.

Conclusion

To summarize, you’ve learned how to get the current time in python using the Datetime module or time module. You’ve also learned how to get the current time of a timezone, get the current time in UTC timezone to deal time in applications of global users.

Additionally, you’ve also learned, how to get time in the granular details lever such as milliseconds, nanoseconds, etc.

How to get current time in python and break up into year, month, day, hour, minute?

10 Answers 10

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The datetime module is your friend:

You don’t need separate variables, the attributes on the returned datetime object have all you need.

Here’s a one-liner that comes in just under the 80 char line max.

The datetime answer by tzaman is much cleaner, but you can do it with the original python time module:

By unpacking timetuple of datetime object, you should get what you want:

Let’s see how to get and print day,month,year in python from current time:

For python 3

You can use gmtime

Note: A time stamp can be passed to gmtime, default is current time as returned by time()

Three libraries for accessing and manipulating dates and times, namely datetime, arrow and pendulum, all make these items available in namedtuples whose elements are accessible either by name or index. Moreover, the items are accessible in precisely the same way. (I suppose if I were more intelligent I wouldn’t be surprised.)

This is an older question, but I came up with a solution I thought others might like.

This has a little more overhead than some of the other solutions on here, but I’ve found it’s so nice to be able to access named values for clartiy’s sake in the code.

How do I get the current time?

How do I get the current time?

51 Answers 51

Trending sort

Trending sort is based off of the default sorting method — by highest score — but it boosts votes that have happened recently, helping to surface more up-to-date answers.

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You can do so using ctime():

Sat Sep 14 21:27:08 2019

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

The following is what I use to get the time without having to format. Some people don’t like the split method, but it is useful here:

It will print in HH:MM:SS format.

date will print date and time will print time.

This is so simple. Try:

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.