Get current time in milliseconds since epoch in Python

This post will discuss how to get the current time in milliseconds since the Epoch in Python.

1. Using `time.time()` function

The standard solution to get the current time since the Epoch is using the time.time() function. It returns time in seconds, which can be easily converted into milliseconds, as shown below:

import time

if __name__ == '__main__':

millisec = time.time() * 1000

print(millisec)

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It returns a floating-point value that can be easily converted to an integer with the int() function.

import time

if __name__ == '__main__':

millisec = int(time.time() * 1000)

print(millisec)

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2. Using `time.time_ns()` function

Starting from Python 3.7, you can use the time.time_ns() function, which is similar to time.time() but returns the total number of nanoseconds since the epoch as an integer.

import time

if __name__ == '__main__':

millisec = time.time_ns() // 1000000

print(millisec)

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3. Using datetime

Another plausible way is to find the current UTC difference with the Epoch time, i.e., 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, which returns a timedelta object. To get time in seconds, you can use the timedelta.total_seconds() function.

from datetime import datetime

if __name__ == '__main__':

millisec = int((datetime.utcnow() - datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds() * 1000)

print(millisec)

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That’s all about getting current time in milliseconds since the epoch in Python.

Get current time in milliseconds since epoch in Python

1. Using time.time() function

2. Using time.time_ns() function

3. Using datetime

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1. Using `time.time()` function

2. Using `time.time_ns()` function