JavaScript timestamp to Python datetime conversion

Question

To get timestamp in JavaScript we use

var ts = new Date().getTime()

What is the proper way to convert it to a Python datetime

Answer 1

For others still getting an error: I had a similar issue but the unix timestamp was in microseconds, i.e. I had to divide the timestamp by 1000000 to get the correct result.

dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1502360499615921)

Answer 2

Your current method is correct, dividing by 1000 is necessary because your JavaScript returns the timestamp in milliseconds, and datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp() expects a timestamp in seconds.

To preserve the millisecond accuracy you can divide by 1000.0, so you are using float division instead of integer division:

>>> dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(jsts/1000.0)
>>> dt
datetime.datetime(2012, 4, 23, 11, 30, 4, 950000)

Answer 3

The way you do it is the correct way, because js includes milliseconds in the date/time. Python (and PHP) as far as I know, don't. For more precision you could use /1000.0.