How to Datetime Objects With Timezone in Python

1. Using datetime Objects With timezone in Python
2. Using the tzinfo and timezone Class in Python
3. Properties of Datetime Objects in Python
4. Types of Datetime Objects in Python
5. Need for Timezone datetime aware Objects in Python
6. Check if an Object Is timezone aware by Its tzinfo in Python
7. Create timezone aware Datetime Objects in Python
8. Conclusion

This guide will take you through the datetime module, teaching you how to work with dates and times to check and create timezone-aware python objects.

Using datetime Objects With timezone in Python

Python comes with an included module that contains dates and times that you can use while coding. These are objects, which means that modifying them alters the objects and not the actual date or time.

The following provides various classes for formatting or manipulating the following for usage in your code.

• Date: The current date in Year-Month-Date format. It would be best to remember that the minimum and maximum years allowed in datetime are 1 and 9999.

MINYEAR and MAXYEAR represent these. Similarly, the minimum date is 1,1,1, and the maximum is 9999,12,31 represented by date.min and date.max respectively.

from datetime import date

# Date specified by user
supplied = date(2022, 1, 30)
# Today's date called
current = date.today()
print("Your date: ")
print(supplied)
print("Current: ")
print(current)

Output:

Your date:
2022-01-30
Current:
2022-01-29

• Time: The current time of the day. Time does not follow leap seconds and classifies each day as 86,400 seconds long by multiplication of 24 hours into 60 minutes and each minute into a further 60 seconds.

The time displayed shows time starting from hours and going up to microseconds (ranging between 0 and 1000000), and tzinfo.

from datetime import time

# Specifying time using constructor
t = time(17, 14, 47)
print("Your time: ", t)

Output:

Your time:  17:14:47

• Datetime: The datetime class returns a combination of the current day and time.

from datetime import datetime

# Date and time specified both
moment = datetime(2022, 1, 30, 10, 30, 45, 812210)
print("My moment: ", moment)
# Calling now() function
current = datetime.now()
print("Current Datetime: ", current)

Output:

My moment:  2022-01-30 10:30:45.812210
Current Datetime:  2022-01-29 05:00:50.742904

• TimeDelta: The timedelta returns the difference between two times, dates, or datetimes. It is used for calculating the duration between two different times.

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

# Current
current = datetime.now()
print("Current: ", str(current))
# Future time
future = current + timedelta(days=4)
# printing future time
print("After 4 days: ", str(future))
# printing time jump
print("Jumped Time:", str(future - current))

Output:

Current:  2022-01-29 05:01:54.844705
After 4 days:  2022-02-02 05:01:54.844705
Jumped Time: 4 days, 0:00:00

Using the tzinfo and timezone Class in Python

The tzinfo is an abstract class in Python that allows for manipulating time according to international standards. You can use this class for describing a specific timezone such as DST, GMT, etc., or a time offset.

The timezone class is another abstract class that you can use to provide offsets from the Time Standards to regulate your clock object. Specifying timezones and tzinfo can be tricky, so you should install the pytz module.

The pytz module includes all timezones in its database, easily specified for usage and time delta calculations. You can install it by using pip in the command line as:

pip install pytz

Once installed, you can start working with pytz.

import datetime
import pytz

# Defining a new datetime with time from US Pacific
UStime = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone("US/Pacific"))
print(UStime)

Output:

2022-01-28 21:04:50.440392-08:00

You can find all the timezones available in the pytz module using pytz.all_timezones

Properties of Datetime Objects in Python

The objects using the above classes in python have specific properties.

• These are immutable.
• These are hashable.
• These support pickling.

Types of Datetime Objects in Python

You can categorize all datetime objects in Python into two types; aware and naive objects.

An aware object can situate itself relatively to all other aware objects. It denotes a specific point in time that cannot be interpreted.

A naive object is the opposite of an aware object. A naive object lacks awareness; i.e., it lacks proper information and hence cannot situate itself to similar objects, but naive objects are easy to work with.

Need for Timezone datetime aware Objects in Python

Datetime aware objects in python are necessary to mimic the real world’s circumstances. While designing software or applications that need to track several timezones across the globe, properly configuring the time can be challenging.

Datetime module and aware objects allow you to refer to the irregular timezones of different dates and set the time according to GMT, DST, and more for best functionality.

Remember to use the pytz module as it contains a database of all timezones and can ease your coding.

Check if an Object Is timezone aware by Its tzinfo in Python

Since tzinfo is an abstract class where you can specify a timezone to follow, aware objects will have a specified timezone, whereas naive objects will be set to None.

# Importing the datetime module
import datetime

current = datetime.datetime.now()

# tzinfo is None
if current.tzinfo == None or current.tzinfo.utcoffset(current) == None:
    print("The object is not Aware")
else:
    print("The object is Aware")

Output:

The object is not Aware

Create timezone aware Datetime Objects in Python

You can easily create timezone aware objects by specifying a timezone or UTC offset to its tzinfo.

import datetime

# Current Date taken
current = datetime.datetime.now()
# Changing current's tzinfo
current = current.replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
# Printing Date
print(current)
# Checking if tzinfo is None or not
if current.tzinfo == None or current.tzinfo.utcoffset(current) == None:
    print("The object is not Aware")
else:
    print("The object is Aware")

Output:

2022-01-29 05:14:49.064797+00:00
The object is Aware

The above code for the aware objects is similar to the previous one. We use datetime.now() to specify a new object.

The only addition is the replace() function for replacing the current object’s tzinfo to UTC, which changes the tzinfo, making the object aware.

Conclusion

Now we understand the concept of the datetime module, how you can use the module to use dates and times with your code, the difference between aware and naive objects, and create timezone-aware objects.