In this example, we are going to see how to make a timezone-aware DateTime object in Python.
Timezone-aware objects are Python DateTime or time objects that include timezone information. An aware object represents a specific moment in time that is not open to interpretation.
Checking if an object is timezone aware or not:
We can easily check if a datetime object is timezone-aware or not. For this, we will store the current date and time in a new variable using the datetime.now() function of datetime module.
Syntax: datetime.now(tz)
Parameters: tz : Specified time zone of which current time and date is required. (Uses Greenwich Meridian time by default.)
Then we will check the timezone information of the object stored in the tzinfo base class. tzinfo is an abstract base class for time zone information objects.
Python3
import datetime
current_date = datetime.datetime.now()
if current_date.tzinfo == None or current_date.tzinfo.\
utcoffset(current_date) == None:
print("Unaware")
else:
print("Aware")
Output:
Timezone aware object using datetime
For this, we will store the current time in a new variable using the datetime.now().time() function of datetime module. Then we will replace the value of the timezone in the tzinfo class of the object using the replace() function. After that convert the date value into ISO 8601 format using the isoformat() method.
Syntax: isoformat(sep=’T’, timespec=’auto’)
Parameters:
- sep: It is a one character separator placed between date and time.
- timespec: Number of additional component of time to include
Code:
Python3
import datetime
current_date = datetime.datetime.now()
current_date = current_date.\
replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
current_date = current_date.isoformat()
print(current_date)
Output:
2021-08-30T09:45:43.291212+00:00Now let’s check if the object is timezone aware or not using the method we used in the 1st section of the article.
Python3
import datetime
current_date = datetime.datetime.now()
current_date = current_date.replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)
if current_date.tzinfo == None or \
current_date.tzinfo.utcoffset(current_date) == None:
print("Unaware")
else:
print("Aware")
current_date = current_date.isoformat()
print(current_date)
Output:
Aware 2021-08-30T09:55:15.111556+00:00Timezone aware object using pytz
You can also use the pytz module to create timezone-aware objects.
For this, we will store the current date and time in a new variable using the datetime.now() function of datetime module and then we will add the timezone using timezone function of pytz module.
Python3
import datetime
import pytz
current_date = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Africa/Abidjan'))
print(current_date)
Output:
2021-08-30 04:35:37.036990+00:00Now let’s check if the object is timezone aware or not using the method we used in the 1st section of the article.
Python3
import datetime
import pytz
current_date = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Africa/Abidjan'))
if current_date.tzinfo == None or current_date.\
tzinfo.utcoffset(current_date)== None:
print("Unaware")
else:
print("Aware")
print(current_date)
Output:
Aware 2021-08-30 04:46:40.670455+00:00