Using %f with strftime() in Python to get microseconds

Solution 1:

You can use datetime's strftime function to get this. The problem is that time's strftime accepts a timetuple that does not carry microsecond information.

from datetime import datetime
datetime.now().strftime("%H:%M:%S.%f")

Should do the trick!

Solution 2:

You are looking at the wrong documentation. The time module has different documentation.

You can use the datetime module strftime like this:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>>
>>> now = datetime.now()
>>> now.strftime("%H:%M:%S.%f")
'12:19:40.948000'

Solution 3:

With Python's time module you can't get microseconds with %f.

For those who still want to go with time module only, here is a workaround:

now = time.time()
mlsec = repr(now).split('.')[1][:3]
print time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.{} %Z".format(mlsec), time.localtime(now))

You should get something like 2017-01-16 16:42:34.625 EET (yes, I use milliseconds as it's fairly enough).

To break the code into details, paste the below code into a Python console:

import time

# Get current timestamp
now = time.time()

# Debug now
now
print now
type(now)

# Debug strf time
struct_now = time.localtime(now)
print struct_now
type(struct_now)

# Print nicely formatted date
print time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z", struct_now)

# Get miliseconds
mlsec = repr(now).split('.')[1][:3]
print mlsec

# Get your required timestamp string
timestamp = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.{} %Z".format(mlsec), struct_now)
print timestamp

For clarification purposes, I also paste my Python 2.7.12 result here:

>>> import time
>>> # get current timestamp
... now = time.time()
>>> # debug now
... now
1484578293.519106
>>> print now
1484578293.52
>>> type(now)
<type 'float'>
>>> # debug strf time
... struct_now = time.localtime(now)
>>> print struct_now
time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=16, tm_min=51, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=0, tm_yday=16, tm_isdst=0)
>>> type(struct_now)
<type 'time.struct_time'>
>>> # print nicely formatted date
... print time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z", struct_now)
2017-01-16 16:51:33 EET
>>> # get miliseconds
... mlsec = repr(now).split('.')[1][:3]
>>> print mlsec
519
>>> # get your required timestamp string
... timestamp = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.{} %Z".format(mlsec), struct_now)
>>> print timestamp
2017-01-16 16:51:33.519 EET
>>>

Solution 4:

This should do the work

import datetime
datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%H:%M:%S.%f")

It will print

HH:MM:SS.microseconds like this e.g 14:38:19.425961