Convert UTC datetime string to local datetime

Here's a resilient method that doesn't depend on any external libraries:

from datetime import datetime
import time

def datetime_from_utc_to_local(utc_datetime):
    now_timestamp = time.time()
    offset = datetime.fromtimestamp(now_timestamp) - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(now_timestamp)
    return utc_datetime + offset

This avoids the timing issues in DelboyJay's example. And the lesser timing issues in Erik van Oosten's amendment.

As an interesting footnote, the timezone offset computed above can differ from the following seemingly equivalent expression, probably due to daylight savings rule changes:

offset = datetime.fromtimestamp(0) - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(0) # NO!

Update: This snippet has the weakness of using the UTC offset of the present time, which may differ from the UTC offset of the input datetime. See comments on this answer for another solution.

To get around the different times, grab the epoch time from the time passed in. Here's what I do:

def utc2local(utc):
    epoch = time.mktime(utc.timetuple())
    offset = datetime.fromtimestamp(epoch) - datetime.utcfromtimestamp(epoch)
    return utc + offset

If you don't want to provide your own tzinfo objects, check out the python-dateutil library. It provides tzinfo implementations on top of a zoneinfo (Olson) database such that you can refer to time zone rules by a somewhat canonical name.

from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import tz

# METHOD 1: Hardcode zones:
from_zone = tz.gettz('UTC')
to_zone = tz.gettz('America/New_York')

# METHOD 2: Auto-detect zones:
from_zone = tz.tzutc()
to_zone = tz.tzlocal()

# utc = datetime.utcnow()
utc = datetime.strptime('2011-01-21 02:37:21', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

# Tell the datetime object that it's in UTC time zone since 
# datetime objects are 'naive' by default
utc = utc.replace(tzinfo=from_zone)

# Convert time zone
central = utc.astimezone(to_zone)

Edit Expanded example to show strptime usage

Edit 2 Fixed API usage to show better entry point method

Edit 3 Included auto-detect methods for timezones (Yarin)