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Python: convert localized timestamp to utc timestamp

An external device provides me a titmestamp IN LOCALIZED TIMEZONE.
This means I get the number of seconds since 1970 January,1st 00:00:00 IN LOCALTIME.

I need to convert this to UTC timestamp (or any other standard notation) to use it to set the Linux clock (e.g.: "date -s @< timestamp >").
My current TZ is CEST (Europe/Rome), but that might change.

What is the right way to do that?

2 Answers
2

You can add/take the difference between your current timezone and UTC in seconds.

For example, if your are in CEST, then this is UTC+2, so you can simply do:

utc = timestamp + (-1 * 2 * 60 * 60)


60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute, 2 because we are 2 hours away from UTC and -1 because we are ahead of it.

Just apply to your retrieved timestamp the local time zone's difference from UTC - the easiest way to do that is to use time.altzone (if you don't want to account for DST, use time.timezone instead) and add it to your timestamp, so:

time.altzone

time.timezone

import time

timestamp = 1532821394 # current CEST timestamp
utc_timestamp = timestamp + time.altzone # 1532814194, UTC+2 atm.


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