[Django]-RuntimeWarning: DateTimeField received a naive datetime

Use django.utils.timezone.make_aware function to make your naive datetime objects timezone aware and avoid those warnings.

It converts naive datetime object (without timezone info) to the one that has timezone info (using timezone specified in your django settings if you don’t specify it explicitly as a second argument):

import datetime
from django.conf import settings
from django.utils.timezone import make_aware

naive_datetime = datetime.datetime.now()
naive_datetime.tzinfo  # None

settings.TIME_ZONE  # 'UTC'
aware_datetime = make_aware(naive_datetime)
aware_datetime.tzinfo  # <UTC>

Just to fix the error to set current time

from django.utils import timezone
import datetime

datetime.datetime.now(tz=timezone.utc) # you can use this value

Quick and dirty – Turn it off:

USE_TZ = False

in your settings.py

make sure settings.py has
USE_TZ = True

In your python file:

from django.utils import timezone

timezone.now() # use its value in model field

One can both fix the warning and use the timezone specified in settings.py, which might be different from UTC.

For example in my settings.py I have:

USE_TZ = True
TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Paris'

Here is a solution; the advantage is that str(mydate) gives the correct time:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> from django.utils.timezone import get_current_timezone
>>> mydate = datetime.now(tz=get_current_timezone())
>>> mydate
datetime.datetime(2019, 3, 10, 11, 16, 9, 184106, 
    tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Europe/Paris' CET+1:00:00 STD>)
>>> str(mydate)
'2019-03-10 11:16:09.184106+01:00'

Another equivalent method is using make_aware, see dmrz post.

If you are trying to transform a naive datetime into a datetime with timezone in django, here is my solution:

>>> import datetime
>>> from django.utils import timezone
>>> t1 = datetime.datetime.strptime("2019-07-16 22:24:00", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
>>> t1
    datetime.datetime(2019, 7, 16, 22, 24)
>>> current_tz = timezone.get_current_timezone()
>>> t2 = current_tz.localize(t1)
>>> t2
    datetime.datetime(2019, 7, 16, 22, 24, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Asia/Shanghai' CST+8:00:00 STD>)
>>>

t1 is a naive datetime and t2 is a datetime with timezone in django’s settings.

You can also override settings, particularly useful in tests:

from django.test import override_settings

with override_settings(USE_TZ=False):
    # Insert your code that causes the warning here
    pass

This will prevent you from seeing the warning, at the same time anything in your code that requires a timezone aware datetime may give you problems. If this is the case, see kravietz answer.

In the model, do not pass the value:

timezone.now()

Rather, remove the parenthesis, and pass:

timezone.now

If you continue to get a runtime error warning, consider changing the model field from DateTimeField to DateField.

I use function to covert date -> datetime aware format like this:

from datetime import datetime, date
from django.utils import timezone

def date_to_datetime_aware(d:date) -> datetime:
    dt = datetime.combine(d, datetime.min.time())
    dt_aware = timezone.make_aware(dt)
    return dt_aware

It helps me to awoid Django RuntimeWarning.

If you need to convert the actual date string to date object, I have got rid of the warning by simply using astimezone:

>>> from datetime import datetime, timezone
>>> datetime_str = '2013-09-04 14:14:13.698105'
>>> datetime_object = datetime.strptime(datetime_str, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f")
>>> datetime_object.astimezone(timezone.utc)
datetime.datetime(2013, 9, 4, 6, 14, 13, 698105, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

I encountered this warning when using the following model.

from datetime import datetime

class MyObject(models.Model):
    my_date = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.now)

To fix it, I switched to the following default.

from django.utils import timezone

class MyObject(models.Model):
    my_date = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now)