from calendar import timegm from datetime import datetime, timedelta def to_unix_timestamp(dt): return int(timegm(dt.utctimetuple())) def hhmm_to_offset(hhmm): """Convert a string time, possibly with missing hours and minutes, to an offset of seconds. """ hhmm = '{:04d}'.format(int(hhmm)) return timedelta(hours=int(hhmm[0:2]), minutes=int(hhmm[2:])).total_seconds()