Python Standard Library

The time Module

The time module provides a number of functions that deal with dates and the time within a day. It’s a thin layer on top of the C runtime library.

A given date and time can either be represented as a floating-point value (the number of seconds since a reference date, usually January 1, 1970), or as a time tuple.

Getting the Current Time

Example 1-79 shows how you can use the time module to get the current time.

Example 1-79. Using the time Module to Get the Current Time

File: time-example-1.py

import time

now = time.time()

print now, "seconds since", time.gmtime(0)[:6]
print
print "or in other words:"
print "- local time:", time.localtime(now)
print "- utc:", time.gmtime(now)

937758359.77 seconds since (1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0)

or in other words:
- local time: (1999, 9, 19, 18, 25, 59, 6, 262, 1)
- utc: (1999, 9, 19, 16, 25, 59, 6, 262, 0)

The tuple returned by localtime and gmtime contains the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, day of the week, day of the year, daylight savings flag. The year number is four digits, the day of week begins with 0 for Monday, and January 1 is day number 1.

Converting Time Values to Strings

You can of course use standard string-formatting operators to convert a time tuple to a string, but the time module also provides a number of standard conversion functions, as Example 1-80 illustrates.

Example 1-80. Using the time Module to Format Dates and Times

File: time-example-2.py import time now = time.localtime(time.time()) print time.asctime(now) ...