string datetime format to time() unix time format in python -

i know must covered question elsewhere, questions saw on looked going in opposite direction. understand how convert time.time() human-readable datetime format follows:

>>> import time, datetime >>> thetime = time.time() >>> thetime 1375289544.41976 >>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(thetime).strftime("%y-%m-%d %h:%m:%s") '2013-07-31 12:51:08' 

what's function going inverse direction?

>>> thetime = '2013-07-30 21:23:14.744643' >>> time.strptime(thetime, "%y-%m-%d %h:%m:%s") traceback (most recent call last):   file "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>   file "/usr/lib/python2.7/_strptime.py", line 454, in _strptime_time     return _strptime(data_string, format)[0]   file "/usr/lib/python2.7/_strptime.py", line 328, in _strptime     data_string[found.end():]) valueerror: unconverted data remains: .744643 

i'd go string seconds since epoch format.

update

this i'm using, seems inelegant---there must function already, right?

def datetostamp(x):     thetime = x.split('.')     return(time.mktime(time.strptime(thetime[0], "%y-%m-%d %h:%m:%s")) + float('.'+thetime[1]))  >>> thetime = '2013-07-30 21:23:14.744643' >>> datetostamp(thetime) 1375233794.744643 

update 2

maybe more simply, i'm missing format code fractions of seconds?

you were missing format fractions of second.

time.strptime(thetime, "%y-%m-%d %h:%m:%s.%f")