Get Current time in Python

In this article, you will learn how to get your locale zone's current time and different time zones.

There are several ways we can use to get the current time in Python.

Example: Current time using datetime object

from datetime import datetime

now = datetime.now()

current_time = now.strftime("%H:%M:%S")
print("Current time =", current_time)

Output

Current time = 12:08:22

In the above program, we have imported datetime class from the datetime module. We used the now() method to get a datetime object that contains the current date and time.

Then with the help of the datetime.strftime() method, we created a string representing the current time.

If we want to create directly a time object containing the current time, we can write the following program.

from datetime import datetime

now = datetime.now().time()

print("now =", now)
print("type(now) =", type(now))

Output

now = 12:19:16.283080
type(now) = <class 'datetime.time'>

Example: Current time using time module

Python also offers a way to get the current time by using the time module.

import time

t = time.localtime()
current_time = time.strftime("%H:%M:%S", t)
print("Current time =", current_time)

Output

Current time = 12:27:30
CodeTexte

Example: Current time of a timezone

We can use pytz module, if we need to find the current time of a specific time zone.

from datetime import datetime
import pytz

tz_NY = pytz.timezone("America/New_York")
datetime_NY = datetime.now(tz_NY)
print("New York time =", datetime_NY.strftime("%H:%H:%S"))

tz_Paris = pytz.timezone("Europe/Paris")
datetime_Paris = datetime.now(tz_Paris)
print("Paris time =", datetime_Paris.strftime("%H:%M:%S"))

Output

New York time = 08:08:04 
Paris time = 13:36:04