Python time Module

In this article, we will go deep into the time module. We will learn how to use different time-related functions defined in the time module.

Python provides a module named time to handle time-related tasks. To use functions defined in the time module, we need to import the module first.

import time

Here we will see the most used time-related functions.

Python time.time()

The time.time() function returns the number of seconds passed since a point of time.

For the Unix system, January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 at UTC is the point where time begins.

import time
seconds = time.time()
print("Seconds since the epoch =", seconds)

Output

Seconds since the epoch = 1635935901.3638976

Python time.ctime()

The time.ctime() function takes as an argument the seconds passed since the epoch and returns a string representing local time.

import time

seconds = 1494654246
local_time = time.ctime(seconds)

print("Local time =", local_time)

After running the above program, the output will be:

Local time = Sat May 13 05:44:06 2017

Python time.sleep()

The time.sleep() function delays the current thread's execution for the given number of seconds.

import time

print("This is printed immediately.")
time.sleep(5)
print("This is printed after 5 seconds.")

Output

This is printed immediately.
This is printed after 5 seconds.

Before seeing other time-related function, let us look at time.struct_time class.

time.struct_time Class

The time module has several functions as asctime(), gmtime(), etc. either take time.struct_time object as argument or return it.

Let us see an example of the time.struct_time object.

time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=13, 
                              tm_hour=5, tm_min=55, tm_sec=6
                              tm_wday=5, tm_yday=133, tm_isdst=0)

The values of the time.struct_time object are accessible using both indices and attributes.

Python time.localtime()

The time.localtime() function takes as an argument the number of seconds passed since the epoch and returns a struct_time in local time.

import time

After running the above program, the output will be as follows:

import time

result = time.localtime(1494654246)
print("result =", result)
print()
print("year =", result.tm_year)
print("month =", result.tm_mon)
print("day =", result.tm_mday)
print("tm_hour =", result.tm_hour)

The execution of the above program will give the following output:

result = time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=5, tm_min=44, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=133, tm_isdst=0)

year = 2017
month = 5
day = 13
tm_hour = 5

When no argument or None is passed to localtime(), the local time is used.

Python time.gmtime()

The time.gmtime() function takes as an argument the number of seconds passed since the epoch and returns a struct_time in UTC.

import time

result = time.gmtime(1494654246)
print("result =", result)
print()
print("year =", result.tm_year)
print("month =", result.tm_mon)
print("day =", result.tm_mday)
print("tm_hour =", result.tm_hour)

After running the above program, the output will be:

result = time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=6, tm_min=44, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=133, tm_isdst=0)

year = 2017
month = 5
day = 13
tm_hour = 6

When no argument or None is passed to gmtime(), the vlaue returned by time() is used.

Python time.mktime()

The time.mktime() function takes as argument a struct_time object (or a tuple of 9 elements corresponding to struct_time) and returns the seconds passed since the epoch in local time. We can say it is the inverse function of localtime().

import time

t = (2017, 5, 13, 5, 44, 6, 5, 133, 0)

local_time = time.mktime(t)
print("Local time =", local_time)

Output

Local time = 1494654246.0

The following example shows how mktime() and localtime() are related.

import time

seconds = 1494654246

# It returns struct_time object
t = time.localtime(seconds)
print("Type of t :", type(t))
print("t =", t)

# It returns seconds from struct_time object
s = time.mktime(t)
print("s =", s)

The output of the above program can be given as follows:

Type of t : <class 'time.struct_time'>
t = time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=5, tm_min=44, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=133, tm_isdst=0)
s = 1494654246.0

Python time.asctime()

The time.asctime() function takes as argument a struct_time object (or a tuple of 9 elements corresponding to struct_time) and returns a string representing it.

import time

t = (2017, 5, 13, 5, 44, 6, 5, 133, 0)

result = time.asctime(t)
print("Result =", result)

After executing the above program, the output will be:

Result = Sat May 13 05:44:06 2017

Python time.strftime()

The time.strftime() function takes as argument a struct_time object (or a tuple of 9 elements corresponding to struct_time) and returns a string representing it based on the format code used.

import time

# get struct_time object
given_tuple = time.localtime()
time_string = time.strftime("%m/%d/%Y, %H:%M:%S", given_tuple)

print("time_string =", time_string)

The output of the above program can be given as follows:

time_string = 11/03/2018, 13:12:17

Above, we used some format codes as %Y, %m, %d, etc.

• %Y - year [0001, ..., 2017, 2018, ..., 9999]
• %m - month [01, 02, ..., 11, 12]
• %d - day [01, 02, ..., 30, 31]
• %H - hour [00, 01, ..., 22, 23]
• %M - minutes [00, 01, ..., 58, 59]
• %S - second [00, 01, .., 58, 59]

If you want to learn more, you can visit time.strftime().

Python time.strptime()

The time.strptime() function parses a string representing time and returns a struct_time object.

import time

time_string = "17 July, 2017"
result = time.strptime(time_string, "%d %B, %Y")

print(result)

After executing the above program, the output will be:

time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=0, tm_yday=198, tm_isdst=-1)

If you want to learn more, you can visit time.strptime().