How to Parse a Time String Containing Milliseconds in It with Python

How can I parse a time string containing milliseconds in it with python?

Python 2.6 added a new strftime/strptime macro %f. The docs are a bit misleading as they only mention microseconds, but %f actually parses any decimal fraction of seconds with up to 6 digits, meaning it also works for milliseconds or even centiseconds or deciseconds.

time.strptime('30/03/09 16:31:32.123', '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S.%f')

However, time.struct_time doesn't actually store milliseconds/microseconds. You're better off using datetime, like this:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> a = datetime.strptime('30/03/09 16:31:32.123', '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S.%f')
>>> a.microsecond
123000

As you can see, .123 is correctly interpreted as 123 000 microseconds.

Converting string to datetime with milliseconds and timezone - Python

EDIT 2: According to this post, strptime doesn't support %z (despite what the documentation suggests). To get around this, you can just ignore the timezone adjustment?:

from datetime import datetime

timestamp = '05/Jan/2015:17:47:59:000-0800'
# only take the first 24 characters of `timestamp` by using [:24]
dt_object = datetime.strptime(timestamp[:24], '%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S:%f')
print(dt_object)

Gives the following output:

$ python date.py
2015-01-05 17:47:59

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EDIT: Your datetime.strptime argument should be '%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S:%f-%z'

With strptime(), %y refers to

Year without century as a zero-padded decimal number

I.e. 01, 99, etc.

If you want to use the full 4-digit year, you need to use %Y

Similarly, if you want to use the 3-letter month, you need to use %b, not %m

I haven't looked at the rest of the string, but there are possibly more mismatches. You can find out how each section can be defined in the table at https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior

Format a datetime into a string with milliseconds

To get a date string with milliseconds, use [:-3] to trim the last three digits of %f (microseconds):

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.utcnow().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f')[:-3]
'2022-09-24 10:18:32.926'

Or slightly shorter:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.utcnow().strftime('%F %T.%f')[:-3]

Convert milliseconds to string %H%M%S.%f

create your timedelta object

from datetime import timedelta

ms = 23500
time = timedelta(milliseconds=ms)

now print the result

print(time) # output: 0:00:02.35

or save the result in a variable

result = time.__str__()

From string to datetime with or without millisecond

l = ['03:18:45.2345', '03:19:23']
for item in l:
    time_format = "%H:%M:%S.%f" if '.' in item else "%H:%M:%S"
    print datetime.datetime.strptime(item, time_format)

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