How to get the current time/timestamp in smartpy contract?

Question

I deployed a smartpy contract in florencenet via smartpy.io. The command sp.timestamp_from_utc_now() used inside the program seems to be not giving the current time. Instead it is giving the same time the contract is deployed. How do I get the current time/timestamp in smartpy?

Answer 1

sp.timestamp_from_utc_now() is a helper function that only works at compilation time, meaning that it produces a constant and doesn't update at runtime.

timestamp_from_utc_now() should be moved to sp.utils soon, which should avoid confusion.

You want to use the instruction sp.now which gives the current block timestamp.