Times2 is based on original times library developed by Vincent Driessen.

The main assumption is to provide library which operates on native and tz-aware datetime objects. Arrow is a great library but introduces new type, which is incompatible with datetime interface and can't be used as a simple replacement - there are conversion steps needed.

The goal of times2 is to provide a useful set of helpers which operates on standard datetime objects.

Times2

Times2 is a small, minimalistic, Python library for dealing with time conversions to and from timezones, for once and for all.

Accepting time

Never work with local (naive) times. Whenever you must accept local time input (e.g. from a user), convert it to universal (or aware) time immediately:

>>> times2.to_universal(datetime.datetime(2015,10,26,10,20,0), 'Europe/Warsaw')
datetime.datetime(2015, 10, 26, 9, 20, tzinfo=<UTC>)

The second argument can be a pytz.timezone instance, or a timezone string. Leaved empty will use output of times2.local_tz()

If the local_time variable already holds timezone info, you must leave out the source timezone from the call.

Date Strings

If you want to accepting datetime representations in string form (for example, from JSON APIs), you can convert them to universal datetimes easily:

>>> import time, times2
>>> print times2.to_universal('2012-02-03 11:59:03-0500')   # auto-detects source timezone

Times utilizes the string parsing routines available in dateutil. Note that the source timezone is auto-detected from the string. If the string contains a timezone offset, you are not allowed to explicitly specify one.

If the string does not contain any timezone offset, you must specify the source timezone explicitly:

>>> print times2.to_universal('2012-02-03 11:59:03', 'Europe/Amsterdam')

This is the inverse of times2.format().

POSIX timestamps

If you prefer working with UNIX (POSIX) timestamps, you can convert them to safe datetime representations easily:

>>> import time, times2
>>> print times2.to_universal(time.time())
datetime.datetime(2015, 10, 26, 14, 28, 7, 283998, tzinfo=<UTC>)

Note that to_universal auto-detects that you give it a UNIX timestamp.

To get the UNIX timestamp representation of any tz-aware datetime, use:

>>> print times2.to_unix(universal_time)

Naive datetimes are not supported. You must convert them to aware datetimes before using to_unix().

Current time

When you want to record the current time, you can use this convenience method:

>>> import times2
>>> times2.now()
datetime.datetime(2015, 10, 26, 14, 38, 41, 871750, tzinfo=<UTC>)

Presenting times

To present times to the end user of your software, you should explicitly format your universal time to your user's local timezone.

>>> import times
>>> now = times2.now()
>>> print times2.format(now, 'CET')
2012-02-01 21:32:10+0100

As with the to_universal function, the second argument may be either a timezone instance or a timezone string.

Note: It is possible to convert universal times to local times, using to_local). However, you probably shouldn't do it, unless you want to strftime() the resulting local date multiple times. In any other case, you are advised to use times.format() directly instead.