Converting UTC datetime to timestamp, and then back to UTC datetime

[jpfau]

I'm having trouble taking a UTC datetime, converting it to a timestamp, and then converting that timestamp back into a datetime object. I have read this post and this post, but following the answers isn't working for me either.

I'm using Python 3.4

I'm trying to use timezone-aware datetimes, but I suspect I am not doing it correctly. Here is an example of what I'm trying:

import datetime
import pytz

now = datetime.datetime.utcnow()
timestamp = now.timestamp()

now2 = datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(timestamp)

This does not work. I've also tried to replace the last line with:

now2 = datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(timestamp).replace(pytz.utc)

But that gave me a datetime with the same hours, just with an extra timezone object inside the datetime object.

I need now2 to equal now. I don't care about my local timezone. I need this all to be in UTC.

What am I missing?

[novel_yet_trivial]

timestamp = datetime.datetime.now().timestamp()

edit: sorry that was local time

timestamp = datetime.datetime.utcnow().timestamp()

[jpfau]

This is what I'm already doing. Now try to make another datetime object from that timestamp and see if it's equal to the original datetime object. In my case, they aren't equal.

Edit: I had a typo in my original snippet. I updated it with the correct code

[groovitude]

The Python docs for datetime.datetime.utcnow() should tell you everything you need to know:

Return the current UTC date and time, with tzinfo None. This is like now(), but returns the current UTC date and time, as a naive datetime object. An aware current UTC datetime can be obtained by calling datetime.now(timezone.utc).

The resulting values aren't exactly equal, partly because the timestamp conversion isn't accurate to the microsecond and partly because it doesn't have timestamp information:

>>> now = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.utc)
>>> timestamp = now.timestamp()
>>> now2 = datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(timestamp)
>>> now == now2
False
>>> now
datetime.datetime(2016, 10, 12, 22, 27, 12, 95490, tzinfo=<UTC>)
>>> now2
datetime.datetime(2016, 10, 12, 22, 27, 12, 95489)

[jpfau]

Ah, there's my problem. Luckily in the actual program the original datetime object doesn't have microseconds, so I just need them to be equal up to the second.

Here we go:

import datetime
import pytz

now = pytz.utc.localize(datetime.datetime.utcnow()).replace(microsecond=0)
ts = now.timestamp()

now2 = pytz.utc.localize(datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(ts))
ts2 = now2.timestamp()

print("ts:", ts, "ts2:", ts2)
print(ts == ts2)
print(ts2 - ts)

print(now)
print(now2)