Converting Local Dates to UTC with Python

You'll need to install one package before we begin, unless you already have it: pytz. If you don't have it installed, install it with pip3 install pytz.

To begin, start by importing pytz and datetime.

import datetime
import pytz

Then, create a variable for your datetime object.

dt = datetime.datetime.now()

Next, create another variable which holds your current timezone. To get the name of your timezone, take a look at pytz.all_timezones or pytz.common_timezones.

local_timezone = pytz.timezone("America/Los_Angeles")

Now, we apply the timezone to the existing datetime object.

local_dt = local_timezone.localize(dt)

Finally, we convert the local timezone into UTC with astimezone.

utc_dt = local_dt.astimezone(pytz.utc)

You can also simplify it to a single variable:

utc_dt = (
    pytz.timezone("America/Los_Angeles")
    .localize(datetime.datetime.now())
    .astimezone(pytz.utc)
)

I hope this helps you!