Convert an RFC 3339 time to a standard Python timestamp

Question

Is there an easy way to convert an RFC 3339 time into a regular Python timestamp?

I\'ve got a script which is reading an ATOM feed and I\'d like to be able to compar

Answer 1

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

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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)

Answer 6

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