How can I get the current time in milliseconds in Python?

For what I needed, here’s what I did, based on @samplebias’ comment above:

import time
millis = int(round(time.time() * 1000))
print millis

Quick’n’easy. Thanks all, sorry for the brain fart.

For reuse:

import time

current_milli_time = lambda: int(round(time.time() * 1000))

Then:

>>> current_milli_time()
1378761833768

time.time() may only give resolution to the second, the preferred approach for milliseconds is datetime.

from datetime import datetime
dt = datetime.now()
dt.microsecond

def TimestampMillisec64():
    return int((datetime.datetime.utcnow() - datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds() * 1000) 

From version 3.7 you can use time.time_ns() to get time as passed nano seconds from epoch. So you can do

ms = time.time_ns() // 1000000 

to get time in mili-seconds as integer.

Just sample code:

import time
timestamp = int(time.time()*1000.0)

Output: 1534343781311

another solution is the function you can embed into your own utils.py

import time as time_ #make sure we don't override time
def millis():
    return int(round(time_.time() * 1000))

If you want a simple method in your code that returns the milliseconds with datetime:

from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

start_time = datetime.now()

# returns the elapsed milliseconds since the start of the program
def millis():
   dt = datetime.now() - start_time
   ms = (dt.days * 24 * 60 * 60 + dt.seconds) * 1000 + dt.microseconds / 1000.0
   return ms

The simpliest way I’ve found to get the current UTC time in milliseconds is:

# timeutil.py
import datetime


def get_epochtime_ms():
    return round(datetime.datetime.utcnow().timestamp() * 1000)

# sample.py
import timeutil


timeutil.get_epochtime_ms()

If you’re concerned about measuring elapsed time, you should use the monotonic clock (python 3). This clock is not affected by system clock updates like you would see if an NTP query adjusted your system time, for example.

>>> import time
>>> millis = round(time.monotonic() * 1000)

It provides a reference time in seconds that can be used to compare later to measure elapsed time.

If you use my code (below), the time will appear in seconds, then, after a decimal, milliseconds. I think that there is a difference between Windows and Unix – please comment if there is.

from time import time

x = time()
print(x)

my result (on Windows) was:

1576095264.2682993

EDIT: There is no difference:) Thanks tc0nn

These multiplications to 1000 for milliseconds may be decent for solving or making some prerequisite acceptable. It could be used to fill a gap in your database which doesn’t really ever use it. Although, for real situations which require precise timing it would ultimately fail. I wouldn’t suggest anyone use this method for mission-critical operations which require actions, or processing at specific timings.

For example: round-trip pings being 30-80ms in the USA… You couldn’t just round that up and use it efficiently.

My own example requires tasks at every second which means if I rounded up after the first tasks responded I would still incur the processing time multiplied every main loop cycle. This ended up being a total function call every 60 seconds. that’s ~1440 a day.. not too accurate.

Just a thought for people looking for more accurate reasoning beyond solving a database gap which never really uses it.

Just another solution using the datetime module for Python 3.

datetime.datetime.timestamp(datetime.datetime.now())