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I have a string representing a unix timestamp (i.e. "1284101485") in Python, and I'd like to convert it to a readable date. When I use time.strftime, I get a TypeError. 

>>>import time
>>>print time.strftime("%B %d %Y", "1284101485")

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: argument must be 9-item sequence, not str

Any help is appreciated!

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7 Answers

up vote 117 down vote

Use datetime module:

import datetime
print(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(int("1284101485")).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))
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up vote 33 down vote 
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.fromtimestamp(1172969203.1)
datetime.datetime(2007, 3, 4, 0, 46, 43, 100000)

Taken from http://seehuhn.de/pages/pdate

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up vote 22 down vote 
>>> import time
>>> time.ctime(int("1284101485"))
'Fri Sep 10 16:51:25 2010'
>>> time.strftime("%D %H:%M", time.localtime(int("1284101485")))
'09/10/10 16:51'
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up vote 4 down vote

You can convert the current time like this

t=datetime.fromtimestamp(time.time())
t.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
'2012-03-07'

To convert a date in string to different formats.

import datetime,time

def createDateObject(str_date,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):    
    timeStamp = time.mktime(time.strptime(str_date,strFormat))
    return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timeStamp)

def FormatDate(objectDate,strFormat="%Y-%m-%d"):
    return objectDate.strftime(strFormat)

Usage
=====
o=createDateObject('2013-03-03')
print FormatDate(o,'%d-%m-%Y')

Output 03-03-2013
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up vote 1 down vote

for those that need UNIX timestamp of a file, use this:

import os, datetime
datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(float(os.path.getmtime("FILE"))).strftime("%B %d, %Y")

Output:

'December 26, 2012'
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up vote 1 down vote

quick and dirty one liner:

'-'.join(str(x) for x in list(tuple(datetime.datetime.now().timetuple())[:6]))

'2013-5-5-1-9-43'

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up vote -1 down vote

Did you look at the datetime package? I believe it has a fromUnixTimestamp method.

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1  
It doesn't, but datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1284101485) produces datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 10, 8, 51, 25). – Anthony Labarre Sep 10 '10 at 7:01
That's what I meant:) – extraneon Sep 10 '10 at 13:26

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