Python / Pandas parse string to date and time

Question

I have a dataframe with a column containing strings that represent date and time like this:

0    Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018
1    Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018
2    Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018
3    Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018
4    Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018

How can I parse the strings to get the time and the data in datetime format?

rahlf23 · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-19T17:04:50.493

4

Just use pd.to_datetime():

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame([
['Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018'],
['Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018'],
['Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018'],
['Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018'],
['Fri Oct 19 17:42:31 2018']],
columns=['Date'])

df['Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['Date'])

Yields:

                 Date
0 2018-10-19 17:42:31
1 2018-10-19 17:42:31
2 2018-10-19 17:42:31
3 2018-10-19 17:42:31
4 2018-10-19 17:42:31

Per @ALollz's comment, you can specify the format to improve performance:

df['Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['Date'], format='%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y')

edited Oct 19 '18 at 17:04

answered Oct 19 '18 at 16:59

rahlf23

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1

And you can speed up the parsing greatly by specifying `format='%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y'` – ALollz Oct 19 '18 at 17:01
Thanks to both of you – Despe1990 Oct 20 '18 at 19:51

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 19 '18 at 17:04

You can try df['column_name']=pd.to_datetime(df['column_name']). This will convert the datetime you have in string to datetime object and store in the same column. Let me know if this works on your dataframe. You have to import pandas as pd for this to work though.

Python / Pandas parse string to date and time

2 Answers2