RFC 3339 date formatting

rfc3339.py

rfc3339.py is a small Python library to format dates to rfc 3339 strings. Useful if you want to add an Atom feed to you site / project. Grab the file, drop it in your python source code, that's it! Licensed under the term of the ISC License a simple, permissive, BSD-like license.

Additionally, you can also install it from PyPi: pip install rfc3339 or easy_install rfc3339.

If you find any bugs or would like to see something added, feel free to open a ticket on BitBucket.

How to use it:

>>> import time
>>> timestamp = time.time()
>>> print timestamp
1220939251.89
>>> import datetime
>>> d = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp)
>>> print d
2008-09-08 22:47:31.893205
>>> from rfc3339 import rfc3339
>>> rfc3339(timestamp) # Works with timestamps
'2008-09-08T22:47:31-07:00'
>>> rfc3339(d) # And datetime & date objects
'2008-09-08T22:47:31-07:00'
>>> rfc3339(d, utc=True) # Normalize time to UTC
'2008-09-08T15:47:31Z'
>>> rfc3339(d, utc=True, use_system_timezone=False)
'2008-09-08T22:47:31Z'

2010-2-5: Handle system timezone correctly. Instead of using the current daylight saving, use the the daylight saving at the time of the datetime object.

2009-12-21: Fixed a bug with daylight savings. Reported by Gary Bishop.

2010-1-26: I've changed the license from “Public domain” to the ISC License.

2011-1-4: Fixed a bug with dates before 1970.

Documentation

Wow! I also made some docs! Generated via pydoc rfc3339

Help on module rfc3339:
NAME
rfc3339
DESCRIPTION
The function rfc3339 formats dates according to the :RFC:3339. rfc3339
tries to have as much as possible sensible defaults.
FUNCTIONS
rfc3339(date, utc=False, use_system_timezone=True)
Return a string formatted according to the :RFC:3339. If called with
utc=True, it normalizes date to the UTC date. If date does not have
any timezone information, uses the local timezone::
        >>> date = datetime.datetime(2008, 4, 2, 20)
        >>> rfc3339(date, utc=True, use_system_timezone=False)
        '2008-04-02T20:00:00Z'
        >>> rfc3339(date) # doctest: +ELLIPSIS
        '2008-04-02T20:00:00...'
    
    If called with `user_system_time=False` don't use the local timezone if
    `date` does not have timezone informations and consider the offset to UTC
    to be zero::
    
        >>> rfc3339(date, use_system_timezone=False)
        '2008-04-02T20:00:00+00:00'
    
    `date` must be a `datetime.datetime`, `datetime.date` or a timestamp as
    returned by `time.time()`::
    
        >>> rfc3339(0, utc=True, use_system_timezone=False)
        '1970-01-01T00:00:00Z'
        >>> rfc3339(datetime.date(2008, 9, 6), utc=True,
        ...         use_system_timezone=False)
        '2008-09-06T00:00:00Z'
        >>> rfc3339(datetime.date(2008, 9, 6),
        ...         use_system_timezone=False)
        '2008-09-06T00:00:00+00:00'
        >>> rfc3339('foo bar')
        Traceback (most recent call last):
        ...
        TypeError: excepted datetime, got str instead

DATA
all = ('rfc3339',)
author = 'Henry Precheur <henry@precheur.org>'
license = 'ISCL'
version = '3'
VERSION
3
AUTHOR
Henry Precheur <henry@precheur.org>