What is python3 equivalent of Date.now() of javascript?

Question

In JavaScript, I can assign:

var now = Date.now();

Then use now to calculate as a number variable

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.now()
>>> datetime.datetime.today()

In python3, Using upper code doesnt seem helpful. Any idea what is equivalent of Date.now().

Answer 1

Date.now() returns the number of milliseconds elapsed since January 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC. The Python 3.3 and later equivalent is:

from datetime import datetime, timezone

now_ms = int(datetime.now(tz=timezone.utc).timestamp() * 1000)

Without tz=timezone.utc, datetime.timestamp will use a naive datetime, usually set to your local time with timezone, daylight savings time, etc. This can be a subtle source of bugs, when going from Python to Javascript, between development environments and production, or around daylight savings time transitions.