Get a dictionary mapping timezone abbreviations to names, using pytz

timezone_lookup.py

""" Make a dictionary that maps timezone abbreviations to timezone names.

The timezone_lookup module supplies a single dictionary, timezone_lookup. For example,

>>> timezone_lookup['EST']
'US/Michigan'
"""

from datetime import datetime
import pytz

timezone_lookup = dict([(pytz.timezone(x).localize(datetime.now()).tzname(), x) for x in pytz.all_timezones])

I found this searching a good way to get such a dictionary. Your solution actually does not work well, because of DST. It gets current available time zones in the world, but not time zones during other summer / winter season. You won't get all string that datetime may use.

Not discounting the issue mentioned above, but you can combine this dictionary with the parsing method outlined here (replace TZINFOS) if you make a slight modification to line 12 to be:

tz_lookup = dict([(pytz.timezone(x).localize(datetime.now()).tzname(), pytz.timezone(x)) for x in pytz.all_timezones])

One caveat, in case you found this through Google like I did:

Sometimes, timezones are overwritten in the resulting dict if they share the same abbreviation. For example, both Israel Standard Time and Indian Standard Time have the same abbreviation, IST. So the dict looked like this:

{
    ...

    'IST': 'Israel',  # Indian Standard Time, Asia/Kolkata not present!

    ...
}

Just something to look out for.