Why python 2.7 doesn’t include Z character (Zulu or zero offset) at the end of UTC datetime object’s isoformat string unlike JavaScript?

>>> datetime.datetime.utcnow().isoformat()
'2013-10-29T09:14:03.895210'

Whereas in javascript

>>>  console.log(new Date().toISOString()); 
2013-10-29T09:38:41.341Z

Python datetime objects don’t have time zone info by default, and without it, Python actually violates the ISO 8601 specification (if no time zone info is given, assumed to be local time). You can use the pytz package to get some default time zones, or directly subclass tzinfo yourself:

from datetime import datetime, tzinfo, timedelta
class simple_utc(tzinfo):
    def tzname(self,**kwargs):
        return "UTC"
    def utcoffset(self, dt):
        return timedelta(0)

Then you can manually add the time zone info to utcnow():

>>> datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=simple_utc()).isoformat()
'2014-05-16T22:51:53.015001+00:00'

Note that this DOES conform to the ISO 8601 format, which allows for either Z or +00:00 as the suffix for UTC. Note that the latter actually conforms to the standard better, with how time zones are represented in general (UTC is a special case.)

Option: isoformat()

Python’s datetime does not support the military timezone suffixes like ‘Z’ suffix for UTC. The following simple string replacement does the trick:

In [1]: import datetime

In [2]: d = datetime.datetime(2014, 12, 10, 12, 0, 0)

In [3]: str(d).replace('+00:00', 'Z')
Out[3]: '2014-12-10 12:00:00Z'

str(d) is essentially the same as d.isoformat(sep=' ')

See: Datetime, Python Standard Library

Option: strftime()

Or you could use strftime to achieve the same effect:

In [4]: d.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%SZ')
Out[4]: '2014-12-10 12:00:00Z'

Note: This option works only when you know the date specified is in UTC.

See: datetime.strftime()

Additional: Human Readable Timezone

Going further, you may be interested in displaying human readable timezone information, pytz with strftime %Z timezone flag:

In [5]: import pytz

In [6]: d = datetime.datetime(2014, 12, 10, 12, 0, 0, tzinfo=pytz.utc)

In [7]: d
Out[7]: datetime.datetime(2014, 12, 10, 12, 0, tzinfo=<UTC>)

In [8]: d.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z')
Out[8]: '2014-12-10 12:00:00 UTC'

The following javascript and python scripts give identical outputs. I think it’s what you are looking for.

JavaScript

new Date().toISOString()

Python

from datetime import datetime

datetime.utcnow().isoformat()[:-3]+'Z'

The output they give is the utc (zelda) time formatted as an ISO string with a 3 millisecond significant digit and appended with a Z.

2019-01-19T23:20:25.459Z

In Python >= 3.2 you can simply use this:

>>> from datetime import datetime, timezone
>>> datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat()
'2019-03-14T07:55:36.979511+00:00'

Python datetimes are a little clunky. Use arrow.

> str(arrow.utcnow())
'2014-05-17T01:18:47.944126+00:00'

Arrow has essentially the same api as datetime, but with timezones and some extra niceties that should be in the main library.

A format compatible with Javascript can be achieved by:

arrow.utcnow().isoformat().replace("+00:00", "Z")
'2018-11-30T02:46:40.714281Z'

Javascript Date.parse will quietly drop microseconds from the timestamp.

There are a lot of good answers on the post, but I wanted the format to come out exactly as it does with JavaScript. This is what I’m using and it works well.

In [1]: import datetime

In [1]: now = datetime.datetime.utcnow()

In [1]: now.strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S') + now.strftime('.%f')[:4] + 'Z'
Out[3]: '2018-10-16T13:18:34.856Z'

pip install python-dateutil

>>> a = "2019-06-27T02:14:49.443814497Z"
>>> dateutil.parser.parse(a)
datetime.datetime(2019, 6, 27, 2, 14, 49, 443814, tzinfo=tzutc())

Pass a UTC timezone object to datetime.now() instead of using datetime.utcnow():

from datetime import datetime, timezone

datetime.now(timezone.utc)
>>> datetime.datetime(2020, 1, 8, 6, 6, 24, 260810, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat()
>>> '2020-01-08T06:07:04.492045+00:00'

That looks good, so let’s see what Django and dateutil think:

from django.utils.timezone import is_aware

is_aware(datetime.now(timezone.utc))
>>> True

import dateutil.parser

is_aware(dateutil.parser.parse(datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat()))
>>> True

Okay, the Python datetime object and the ISO 8601 string are UTC “aware”. Now let’s look at what JavaScript thinks of the datetime string. Borrowing from this answer we get:

let date= '2020-01-08T06:07:04.492045+00:00';
const dateParsed = new Date(Date.parse(date))

document.write(dateParsed);
document.write("\n");
// Tue Jan 07 2020 22:07:04 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

document.write(dateParsed.toISOString());
document.write("\n");
// 2020-01-08T06:07:04.492Z

document.write(dateParsed.toUTCString());
document.write("\n");
// Wed, 08 Jan 2020 06:07:04 GMT

Notes:

I approached this problem with a few goals:

• generate a UTC “aware” datetime string in ISO 8601 format
• use only Python Standard Library functions for datetime object and string creation
• validate the datetime object and string with the Django timezone utility function and the dateutil parser
• use JavaScript functions to validate that the ISO 8601 datetime string is UTC aware

Note that this approach does not include a Z suffix and does not use utcnow(). But it’s based on the recommendation in the Python documentation and it passes muster with both Django and JavaScript.

You may also want to read this blog post.

By combining all answers above I came with following function :

from datetime import datetime, tzinfo, timedelta
class simple_utc(tzinfo):
    def tzname(self,**kwargs):
        return "UTC"
    def utcoffset(self, dt):
        return timedelta(0)


def getdata(yy, mm, dd, h, m, s) :
    d = datetime(yy, mm, dd, h, m, s)
    d = d.replace(tzinfo=simple_utc()).isoformat()
    d = str(d).replace('+00:00', 'Z')
    return d


print getdata(2018, 02, 03, 15, 0, 14)

I use pendulum:

import pendulum


d = pendulum.now("UTC").to_iso8601_string()
print(d)

>>> 2019-10-30T00:11:21.818265Z

>>> import arrow

>>> now = arrow.utcnow().format('YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.SSS')
>>> now
'2018-11-28T21:34:59.235'
>>> zulu = "{}Z".format(now)
>>> zulu
'2018-11-28T21:34:59.235Z'

Or, to get it in one fell swoop:

>>> zulu = "{}Z".format(arrow.utcnow().format('YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.SSS'))
>>> zulu
'2018-11-28T21:54:49.639Z'