How to test if a given time-stamp is in seconds or milliseconds?

python datetime timestamp unix-timestamp
Ryan picture Ryan · May 29, 2014 · Viewed 31.7k times · Source

Assume a given variable, it is containing a UNIX time-stamp, but whether it is in seconds or milliseconds format is unknown, I want to assign to a variable which is in seconds format

For Example:

unknown = 1398494489444 # This is millisecond
t = ???

Updated: I understand it is not possible to tell without giving some limitations, so here is it

  • current_ts - 86400 * 365 < unknown < current_ts

Assume current_ts = current unix timestamp

Answer

Sandman picture Sandman · Jun 1, 2014

If you convert the maximum timestamp values with x digits in millis you get something like this:

  • 9999999999999 (13 digits) means Sat Nov 20 2286 17:46:39 UTC
  • 999999999999 (12 digits) means Sun Sep 09 2001 01:46:39 UTC
  • 99999999999 (11 digits) means Sat Mar 03 1973 09:46:39 UTC

Can your timestamps be older than 2001? If not i think you're safe to check whether the number has 13 digits or more - if yes you have milliseconds, if not you have seconds. Of course this will only work until timestamps in seconds will have 13 digits as well, which means timestamps in milliseconds will have 16 digits:

  • 1000000000000000 (16 digits) means Fri Sep 27 33658 01:46:40 but by then i will be living on a planet from the Alpha Centauri system and time standards will probably have changed a bit :)

P.S. you can loosen up the condition to 12 digits or more, if your timestamps can't go back further than 1973. The condition should only be ok up until:

  • 100000000000000 (15 digits) means Wed Nov 16 5138 09:46:40 because this in seconds will have 12 digits and will overlap with your condition

Related questions

Convert datetime to Unix timestamp and convert it back in python

I have dt = datetime(2013,9,1,11), and I would like to get a Unix timestamp of this datetime object. When I do (dt - datetime(1970,1,1)).total_seconds() I got the timestamp 1378033200. When converting it back using datetime.fromtimestamp I got datetime.datetime(2013, 9, 1, 6, 0). …

Read More
How to convert integer timestamp to Python datetime

I have a data file containing timestamps like "1331856000000". Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of documentation for the format, so I'm not sure how the timestamp is formatted. I've tried Python's standard datetime.fromordinal() and datetime.fromtimestamp() and a few …

Read More
get UTC timestamp in python with datetime

Is there a way to get the UTC timestamp by specifying the date? What I would expect: datetime(2008, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0) should result in 1199145600 Creating a naive datetime object means that there is no time zone information. If I look at the documentation …

Read More