I have to create an “Expires” value 5 minutes in the future, but I have to supply it in UNIX Timestamp format. I have this so far, but it seems like a hack.

def expires():
    '''return a UNIX style timestamp representing 5 minutes from now'''
    epoch = datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1)
    seconds_in_a_day = 60 * 60 * 24
    five_minutes = datetime.timedelta(seconds=5*60)
    five_minutes_from_now = datetime.datetime.now() + five_minutes
    since_epoch = five_minutes_from_now - epoch
    return since_epoch.days * seconds_in_a_day + since_epoch.seconds

Is there a module or function that does the timestamp conversion for me?

Another way is to use calendar.timegm:

future = datetime.datetime.utcnow() + datetime.timedelta(minutes=5)
return calendar.timegm(future.timetuple())

It’s also more portable than %s flag to strftime (which doesn’t work on Windows).

Now in Python >= 3.3 you can just call the timestamp() method to get the timestamp as a float.

import datetime
current_time = datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc)
unix_timestamp = current_time.timestamp() # works if Python >= 3.3

unix_timestamp_plus_5_min = unix_timestamp + (5 * 60)  # 5 min * 60 seconds

Just found this, and its even shorter.

import time
def expires():
    '''return a UNIX style timestamp representing 5 minutes from now'''
    return int(time.time()+300)

This is what you need:

import time
import datetime
n = datetime.datetime.now()
unix_time = time.mktime(n.timetuple())

You can use datetime.strftime to get the time in Epoch form, using the %s format string:

def expires():
    future = datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(seconds=5*60)
    return int(future.strftime("%s"))

Note: This only works under linux, and this method doesn’t work with timezones.

Here’s a less broken datetime-based solution to convert from datetime object to posix timestamp:

future = datetime.datetime.utcnow() + datetime.timedelta(minutes=5)
return (future - datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds()

See more details at Converting datetime.date to UTC timestamp in Python.

def in_unix(input):
  start = datetime.datetime(year=1970,month=1,day=1)
  diff = input - start
  return diff.total_seconds()

The key is to ensure all the dates you are using are in the utc timezone before you start converting. See http://pytz.sourceforge.net/ to learn how to do that properly. By normalizing to utc, you eliminate the ambiguity of daylight savings transitions. Then you can safely use timedelta to calculate distance from the unix epoch, and then convert to seconds or milliseconds.

Note that the resulting unix timestamp is itself in the UTC timezone. If you wish to see the timestamp in a localized timezone, you will need to make another conversion.

Also note that this will only work for dates after 1970.

   import datetime
   import pytz

   UNIX_EPOCH = datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, tzinfo = pytz.utc)
   def EPOCH(utc_datetime):
      delta = utc_datetime - UNIX_EPOCH
      seconds = delta.total_seconds()
      ms = seconds * 1000
      return ms

The following is based on the answers above (plus a correction for the milliseconds) and emulates datetime.timestamp() for Python 3 before 3.3 when timezones are used.

def datetime_timestamp(datetime):
    '''
    Equivalent to datetime.timestamp() for pre-3.3
    '''
    try:
        return datetime.timestamp()
    except AttributeError:
        utc_datetime = datetime.astimezone(utc)
        return timegm(utc_datetime.timetuple()) + utc_datetime.microsecond / 1e6

To strictly answer the question as asked, you’d want:

datetime_timestamp(my_datetime) + 5 * 60

datetime_timestamp is part of simple-date. But if you were using that package you’d probably type:

SimpleDate(my_datetime).timestamp + 5 * 60

which handles many more formats / types for my_datetime.

def expiration_time():
    import datetime,calendar
    timestamp = calendar.timegm(datetime.datetime.now().timetuple())
    returnValue = datetime.timedelta(minutes=5).total_seconds() + timestamp
    return returnValue

Note that solutions with timedelta.total_seconds() work on python-2.7+. Use calendar.timegm(future.utctimetuple()) for lower versions of Python.