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Sorting a List of Dates in Python with Timezone Awareness - implementing UTC Conversion

๐Ÿ‘€ Views: 480 ๐Ÿ’ฌ Answers: 1 ๐Ÿ“… Created: 2025-08-21
python datetime sorting Python

I keep running into This might be a silly question, but After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm having trouble sorting a list of datetime objects in Python that include timezone information. I fetched a list of events with their start times, but some of these times are in UTC and others are in local timezone. Hereโ€™s a simplified version of my code: ```python from datetime import datetime from pytz import timezone, UTC # Sample data with mixed timezone information events = [ {'name': 'Event A', 'start_time': datetime(2023, 10, 1, 15, 0, tzinfo=timezone('US/Eastern'))}, {'name': 'Event B', 'start_time': datetime(2023, 10, 1, 14, 0, tzinfo=UTC)}, {'name': 'Event C', 'start_time': datetime(2023, 10, 1, 16, 0, tzinfo=timezone('US/Pacific'))}, ] # Attempt to sort the events sorted_events = sorted(events, key=lambda x: x['start_time']) for event in sorted_events: print(event['name'], event['start_time']) ``` When I run this, I get the following output: ``` Event B 2023-10-01 14:00:00+00:00 Event A 2023-10-01 15:00:00-04:00 Event C 2023-10-01 16:00:00-07:00 ``` As you can see, the order of events is incorrect because the datetime objects are being sorted without being converted into a common timezone. Iโ€™ve tried using `astimezone()` to convert all dates to UTC before sorting, but I keep running into the behavior: `ValueError: astimezone() want to be applied to a naive datetime`. Hereโ€™s what I attempted: ```python # Convert all events to UTC first for event in events: event['start_time'] = event['start_time'].astimezone(UTC) if event['start_time'].tzinfo else event['start_time'].replace(tzinfo=UTC) ``` This approach seems to partially work, but I still need to get the sorted order correct. How can I properly sort this list of events considering their timezone information? Is there a more efficient way to handle this scenario in Python 3.10 and ensure that I account for all timezone differences correctly? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! This is part of a larger application I'm building. Any ideas what could be causing this? Thanks in advance! This is my first time working with Python LTS. Is there a simpler solution I'm overlooking?