how to get tz_info object corresponding to current timezone?

Question

Is there a cross-platform function in python (or pytz) that returns a tzinfo object corresponding to the timezone currently set on the computer?

environment variables cannot be counted on as they are not cross-platform

Solution 1

>>> import datetime
>>> today = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> insummer = datetime.datetime(2009,8,15,10,0,0)
>>> from pytz import reference
>>> localtime = reference.LocalTimezone()
>>> localtime.tzname(today)
'PST'
>>> localtime.tzname(insummer)
'PDT'
>>> 

Solution 2

tzlocal module that returns pytz timezones works on *nix and win32:

from datetime import datetime
from tzlocal import get_localzone # $ pip install tzlocal

# get local timezone    
local_tz = get_localzone() 


print local_tz.localize(datetime(2012, 1, 15))
# -> 2012-01-15 00:00:00+04:00 # current utc offset
print local_tz.localize(datetime(2000, 1, 15))
# -> 2000-01-15 00:00:00+03:00 # past utc offset (note: +03 instead of +04)
print local_tz.localize(datetime(2000, 6, 15))
# -> 2000-06-15 00:00:00+04:00 # changes to utc offset due to DST

Note: it takes into account both DST and non-DST utc offset changes.

Solution 3

Python 3.7:

import datetime

datetime.datetime.now().astimezone().tzinfo

Solution 4

time.timezone returns current timezone offset. there is also a datetime.tzinfo, if you need more complicated structure.

Solution 5

This following code snippet returns time in a different timezone irrespective of the timezone configured on the server.

# pip install pytz tzlocal

from tzlocal import get_localzone
from datetime import datetime
from pytz import timezone

local_tz = get_localzone()
local_datetime = datetime.now(local_tz)

zurich_tz = timezone('Europe/Zurich')
zurich_datetime = zurich_tz.normalize(local_datetime.astimezone(zurich_tz))

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