How can I convert datetime to unix timestamp in python

2024 edit:

• general note: with Python 3.9+, use zoneinfo. no need for a 3rd party lib anymore.
• dateutil-specific: dateutil's parser can be fed with a mapping of abbreviations to IANA time zone names, to parse abbreviations. Example.

2020 answer:

%Z can't parse the time zone abbreviation PT - I suggest you skip parsing it and add it "manually" instead:

from datetime import datetime
import dateutil

news_date = "Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:11:06 PT"

# parse string without the timezone:
news_date = datetime.strptime(news_date[:-3], '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')

# add the timezone:
news_date = news_date.replace(tzinfo=dateutil.tz.gettz('US/Pacific'))

# extract POSIX (seconds since epoch):
news_date_posix = news_date.timestamp()
# 1592284266.0

if you have multiple strings with different timezones, you could use a dict to map the abbreviations to time zone names, e.g.

tzmapping = {'PT': 'US/Pacific'}
news_date = "Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:11:06 PT"
# get appropriate timezone from string, according to tzmapping:
tz = dateutil.tz.gettz(tzmapping[news_date.split(' ')[-1]])
# parse string and add timezone:
news_date_datetime = datetime.strptime(news_date[:-3], '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S')
news_date_datetime = news_date_datetime.replace(tzinfo=tz)