times

What it is and what it does

Times is a minimal timezone-handling library that enforces a best practice: always work with UTC internally and convert to/from local timezones only at input and output boundaries. It provides functions to convert local times to universal time, parse datetime strings with auto-detected or explicit timezones, work with POSIX timestamps, and format UTC times for display in a specific timezone. The library depends on Arrow and is built on top of it as of version 0.7.

The package is explicitly abandoned and no longer maintained. Its own documentation states that users should migrate to Arrow instead. While it still installs and runs (with low friction), it receives no updates, security patches, or bug fixes, and the repository is archived. It should be considered a legacy package suitable only for maintaining existing code, not for new projects.

Use it for:

• Converting user-submitted local times to UTC for storage in a database or API.
• Parsing datetime strings from JSON APIs with automatic timezone detection.
• Formatting UTC datetimes for display to end users in their local timezone.
• Converting POSIX timestamps to readable datetime objects with timezone context.
• Enforcing timezone-aware datetime handling in legacy Python 2 codebases.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Times converts between universal (UTC) time and arbitrary timezones, and parses/formats datetime strings and POSIX timestamps with explicit timezone handling.

No, not for new projects. The package is abandoned since 2014 and explicitly recommends Arrow as a replacement. While it has low install friction and no known vulnerabilities, its lack of maintenance means no security updates, no support for modern Python versions, and no bug fixes. Use Arrow directly instead, which provides the same functionality with active maintenance. Only install times if you are maintaining legacy code that already depends on it.

Install

times on PyPI

pip install times

uv add times

poetry add times

Installing times

Before you install

Low install friction; single pure-Python wheel. However, the package is abandoned as of 2014 and explicitly recommends Arrow as a replacement in its own documentation.

License in practice

BSD permissive license places no restrictions on use, modification, or redistribution in proprietary or open-source projects.

Quickstart

pip install times

import times

# Convert local time to UTC
universal = times.to_universal('2012-02-03 11:59:03', 'Europe/Amsterdam')

# Format UTC time for display
formatted = times.format(universal, 'CET')

Verify before relying

• Whether times 0.7 is fully compatible with modern Python versions (classifiers list only up to 3.3).
• Current state of Arrow integration in times 0.7 and whether it handles all legacy times use cases.
• Whether timezone string parsing via dateutil remains reliable without active maintenance.
• Support for datetime strings in standard formats beyond those shown in the documentation.

Package facts

Evidence: times-0.7-py2.py3-none-any.whl

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