To get timestamp in JavaScript we use
var ts = new Date().getTime()
What is the proper way to convert it to a Python datetime so far I use the following code
>>> jsts = 1335205804950
>>> dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(jsts/1000)
>>> dt
datetime.datetime(2012, 4, 24, 0, 30, 4)
I divide timestamp by 1000 because I get error like
ValueError Traceback (most recent call last)
1 d = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(a)
ValueError: year is out of range
Your current method is correct, dividing by 1000 is necessary because your JavaScript returns the timestamp in milliseconds, and datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp() expects a timestamp in seconds.
To preserve the millisecond accuracy you can divide by 1000.0, so you are using float division instead of integer division:
>>> dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(jsts/1000.0)
>>> dt
datetime.datetime(2012, 4, 23, 11, 30, 4, 950000)
datetime.fromtimestamp(1485373592240) fails unless divided by 1000// - so if you divide a float by an int with / you get a float.I've had the same issue, thanks to @andrew-clark for the answer, i've build a small example to handle both cases:
try:
# when timestamp is in seconds
date = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
except (ValueError):
# when timestamp is in miliseconds
date = datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp / 1000)
For others still getting an error: I had a similar issue but the unix timestamp was in microseconds, i.e. I had to divide the timestamp by 1000000 to get the correct result.
dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1502360499615921)
The way you do it is the correct way, because js includes milliseconds in the date/time. Python (and PHP) as far as I know, don't.
For more precision you could use /1000.0.
it is a lot of years after this original question, but to anyone wondering, the best approach I found, beyond just dividing by 1000, and to really ensure you have the correct date, as I was getting different results from javascript and python, you need to define UTC as the timezone to get the correct date:
import datetime from datetime
from dateutil import tz
utc_tz = tz.gettz("UTC")
datetime.fromtimestamp(1663804800000/1000, tz=utc_tz)
# datetime.datetime(2022, 9, 22, 0, 0, tzinfo=tzwin('UTC'))
Apparently, javascript new Date(timestamp) will assume UTC for timestamps and I was getting the incorrect date and time when using just datetime:
datetime.fromtimestamp(1663804800000/1000)
# datetime.datetime(2022, 9, 21, 21, 0)
