datetime can be used to work with date and time in a Python script. Take for example the following.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import datetime

print(f"today  = {datetime.datetime.today()}")
print(f"now    = {datetime.datetime.now()}")
print(f"utcnow = {datetime.datetime.utcnow()}")

Better yet, instead of "import datetime" you can go with from datetime import datetime so that you can use datetime.xxx() instead of datetime.datetime.xxx().

#!/usr/bin/python3
from datetime import datetime

print(f"today  = {datetime.today()}")
print(f"now    = {datetime.now()}")
print(f"utcnow = {datetime.utcnow()}")

Running this script will return something like this.

today  = 2023-02-09 21:34:36.025655
now    = 2023-02-09 21:34:36.025713
utcnow = 2023-02-10 03:34:36.025733

date() and time() can be included to only get the date or time.

#!/usr/bin/python3
from datetime import datetime

print(f"today date = {datetime.today().date()}")
print(f"today time = {datetime.today().time()}")

Which should print something like this.

today date = 2023-02-09
today time = 21:34:36.025706

Often, when issuing a request to a REST API, the response timestamp should be a string.

#!/usr/bin/python3
response = requests.get("https://example.com/api/v1")
timestamp = response['timestamp']

Or, when submitting a query to a SQL database, timestamp may be a string or a datetime object.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import psycopg2
connection = psycopg2.connect(database=db_name, host=db_host, user=db_user, password=db_pass, port=db_port)
cursor  = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("select timestamp from mytable")
results = cursor.fetchall()

for row in results:
  timestamp = row[0]

cursor.close()
connection.close()

type can be used to determine if the timestamp object is a string or boolean or datetime object, et cetera.

print(f"timestamp type = {type(timestamp)}")

If the timestamp object is not a datetime object, strptime can be used to convert the object into a datetime object so that you can do something with the datetime object.

#!/usr/bin/python3
datetime_object = datetime.strptime("2023-07-02 07:14:58", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

print(f"datetime_object = {datetime_object}")

strftime can be used for a customized date and time format.

#!/usr/bin/python3
from datetime import datetime
print(f"formatted date time = {datetime.today().strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S")}")

Which should print the following.

formatted date time = 02/09/2023 06:24:10

Following are commonly used options.

The pytz (Python Time Zone) module can be used to include time zone. You will probably need to use pip to install pytz.

pip install pytz

Then astimezone() and %z and %Z can be used to include the time zone.

#!/usr/bin/python3
from datetime import datetime
import pytz

print(f"time zone offset = {datetime.now().astimezone().strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %z")}")
print(f"time zone = {datetime.now().astimezone().strftime("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %Z")}")

Which should return something like this.

time zone offset = 05/25/2023 02:23:57 -0500
time zone = 05/25/2023 02:23:57 CDT

Here is how you can return the date and time in a specific time zone.

#!/usr/bin/python
from datetime import datetime
import pytz
from pytz import timezone

print("datetime.now(timezone('Asia/Kolkata')))
print("datetime.now(timezone('America/Chicago')))
print("datetime.now(timezone('CST6CDT')))

Here is how you can print the timezones that can be used with pytz.

#!/usr/bin/python
import pytz

for timezone in pytz.all_timezones:
  print(timezone)                     

relativedelta can be used to adjust the date forward or backwards. You will need to install the python-dateutil package to use relativedelta.

pip install python-dateutil

Here are some examples.

#!/usr/bin/python
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta

one_hour_ago  = datetime.now() - relativedelta(hours=1)
one_day_ago   = datetime.now() - relativedelta(days=1)
one_week_ago  = datetime.now() - relativedelta(weeks=1)
one_month_ago = datetime.now() - relativedelta(months=1)
one_year_ago  = datetime.now() - relativedelta(years=1)