6 ways to get current Timestamp in Python

Python, Python-DateTime

In this post, we are going to understand 6 ways to get current Timestamp in Python with code examples. To get the DateTime information Python provides an in-built DateTime module, Using it we can extract hours, minutes, seconds, microseconds, days of the week, months, years, days of the month, different dates, and time format, and timestamp data.

1. Time Module to get current Timestamp

The time module provides many functions to get the time. The time() function return the time in the number of seconds elapsed since the epoch.

Python Program to get current Timestamp

import time

timesecondEpoch = time.time()

print('secondEpoch :',timesecondEpoch)

#return struct_time
time_obj = time.localtime(timesecondEpoch)

print('\nStruct_time:\n',time_obj)

Output

secondEpoch : 1626190503.672068

 Struct_time:
 time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=21, tm_min=5, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=194, tm_isdst=0)

How to Access the member property of Time object in Python

Access the member property of time_obj to convert struct_time to the current timestamp in string format.

timesecondEpoch = time.time()

time_obj = time.localtime(timesecondEpoch)


#converting struct_time to current timestamp in string format

print('struct_time to current timestamp:\n %d-%d-%d %d:%d:%d' % (
time_obj.tm_mday, time_obj.tm_mon, time_obj.tm_year, time_obj.tm_hour, time_obj.tm_min, time_obj.tm_sec))

Output

struct_time to current timestamp:
 13-7-2021 21:5:3

2. Time.ctime() method to get current Timestamp

We can get the current timestamp using the time module ctime() method. It takes a second since epoch and converts it into the string format. If seconds are not given then it returns the current timestamp.

Program to get current Timestamp using Time.ctime() 

import time

currenttime_str = time.ctime()
print(currenttime_str)

Output

Wed Jul 14 02:05:06 2021

3. Using Time Module gmtime() method

In this example we are using the gmttime() method of the time module and later converting it to the current timestamp using strftime()

Python Program to get current timestamp

import time

  
gmt = time.gmtime()
print("GMT Time :", gmt)


print('\n gmt struct_time to current timestamp:\n %d-%d-%d %d:%d:%d' % (
gmt.tm_mday, gmt.tm_mon, gmt.tm_year, gmt.tm_hour, gmt.tm_min, gmt.tm_sec))


# using the strtime() function

print("\nGMT: "+time.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %I:%M:%S %p %Z",gmt))

Output

GMT Time : time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=20, tm_min=53, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=194, tm_isdst=0)

 gmt struct_time  to current timestamp:
 13-7-2021 20:53:0

GMT: Tue, 13 Jul 2021 08:53:00 PM USA Standard Time

4.Using calender Module

The current timespan can be get using the calendar module along with the time module gmt() function.

Program Example

import calendar
import time

curr_time_stamp = calendar.timegm(time.gmtime())
print(curr_time_stamp)

Output

1626213256

5. Using Datetime module

To get the current date and time we are going to use datetime.now() method of class datetime define in the datetime module.

Syntax 

datetime.now(timezone=none)

Return: The datetime object returns date and timestamp information of the given time-zone else returns the local timezone.

Program example : Get current Timestamp

from datetime import datetime
dt_obj = datetime.now()
print('current datetime :',dt_obj)

Output

current datetime : 2021-04-07 18:53:14.763064

Access Member property of datetime object

By using datetime class, which has property day, month, year, hour, minute, second, and millisecond, we can get all information of datetime using these properties.

Program Example

from datetime import datetime
dt_obj = datetime.now()
print('yyyy-mm-dd   =',dt_obj.year, '-',dt_obj.month, '-',dt_obj.day)
print('Timestamp hh:mm:ss:ms =' ,dt_obj.hour, ':', dt_obj.minute, ':', dt_obj.second, ':', dt_obj.microsecond)

Output

date in yyyy-mm-dd = 2021 - 4 - 7
Timestamp hh:mm:ss:ms = 19 : 46 : 31 : 567594

In the above code, we have used datetime class object property to access date and timestamp information.

Convert datetime to string format

Instead of accessing each member property of datetime class object. We can use strftime() method to get datetime in a different format by using one line of code as we are doing in the below example.

from datetime import datetime

dt_obj = datetime.now()

#date and time in a different format :# dd/mm/YY H:M:S

dt_cust = dt_obj.strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S")

print(" date and time in mm/dd/YY H:M:S format :", dt_cust)

Output

 date and time in mm/dd/YY H:M:S format : 04/07/2021 20:54:47

6. Get Current date only using datetime

In Python, the current date can be got in two ways:

  • date():To get the date using date() method, need to create object of datetime class object.
  • Today():Using the today() method of date class.
from datetime import date,datetime

#using datetime class date() method
dt_date = datetime.now().date()


#using date class today()  method

todaydate = date.today()

print('datetime    =',dt_date)

print('Using date class: today date =',todaydate)

Output

Using datetime class: Tdoay date  = 2021-07-13
Using date class: today date = 2021-07-13

7. How to get current time only using DateTime Module

To get the time in python we can use the time() method of datetime class. We can get all information of time by directly print the object or else access all properties like hours, min, etc.

Program Example

from datetime import datetime
time_now = datetime.now().time()
print('current time =',time_now)

#get all property of date using the time_now object

print('timestamp property =',time_now.hour, ':' , time_now.minute,':',  time_now.second,':' , time_now.microsecond)

This is the output we will get

current time  = 01:17:20.087430
timestamp property = 1 : 41 : 43 : 276050

Summary :

We have explored in Python 5 ways to get current Timestamp using different multiple modules Using time module, calendar Module, Datetime module.

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