How to Handle Abbreviated Time Zone Names in Date/Time Parsing with Python?

Parsing Date/Time Strings with Abbreviated Time Zone Names in Python

Parsing timestamps containing abbreviated time zone names can be challenging in Python. One might attempt to use the dateutil library's parse() function, but it does not natively handle abbreviated time zones.

A Comprehensive Solution

Fortunately, dateutil offers an alternative solution. By passing a dictionary of time zone names to GMT offsets to the tzinfos keyword argument, we can specify the necessary time zone information. This allows for flexibility in parsing a wide range of time zone abbreviations. Here's an example:

<code class="python">import dateutil.parser as dp

# Dictionary mapping time zone abbreviations to GMT offsets
tzd = {'EST': -5*3600, 'PDT': -7*3600, ...}

s = 'Sat, 11/01/09 8:00PM'

for tz_code in ('PST','PDT','MST','MDT','CST','CDT','EST','EDT'):
    dt = s+' '+tz_code
    print(dt, '=', dp.parse(dt, tzinfos=tzd))</code>

In this example, the script iterates through a list of common time zone abbreviations and parses the given timestamp string accordingly. The output would be similar to:

Sat, 11/01/09 8:00PM PST = 2009-11-01 20:00:00-08:00
Sat, 11/01/09 8:00PM PDT = 2009-11-01 20:00:00-07:00
...

Populating the Time Zone Dictionary

Generating the time zone dictionary is as simple as creating a map of the abbreviations to their corresponding GMT offsets. For this, one can consult resources such as timeanddate.com or Wikipedia. Note that some abbreviations may have multiple possible interpretations, so it's important to carefully consider which interpretation to assign based on context.

Conclusion

By leveraging the tzinfos keyword argument in dateutil's parse() function, we can parse timestamps with abbreviated time zones in Python, enabling more comprehensive date/time handling capabilities.

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