python - strtotime equivalent?

Question

Hello,

I'm using this to convert date time strings to a unix timestamp:

str(int(time.mktime(time.strptime(date,"%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z"))))

However often the date structure isn't the same so I keep getting the following error message:

time data did not match format: data=Tue, 26 May 2009 19:58:20 -0500 fmt=%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z

Does anyone know of any simply function to convert a string representation of a date/time to a unix timestamp in python? I really don't want to have to open a process to call a php script to echo the timestamp everytime time in a loop :)

Answer 1

from dateutil.parser import parse

parse('Tue, 26 May 2009 19:58:20 -0500').strftime('%s')

# returns '1243364300'