Converting column in Dataframe to datetime

Question

I've been trying to use the to_datetime function to convert values in my column to datetime:

df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'],errors='coerce',format='%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z %Z')

After that, I received only NaT values.

Example: Value Format in Column: '1979-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC'

After that, I get an error: Unknown string format: 1979-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC — Katarzyna, Mar 09 '20 at 13:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 09 '20 at 14:02

3

I think you can't parse utc offset (+0000) and timeszone information at the sime time.

You might want to remove the UTC at the end and only parse the offset.

df['date'] = df.date.str[:-4]
df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'], format='%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z')

answered Mar 09 '20 at 14:02

mjspier

It worked, I changed it to: df.date = df.date.astype(str) df['date'] = df.date.str[:-3] and then df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'], utc=True) Thank you – Katarzyna Mar 09 '20 at 14:22

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 09 '20 at 14:03

1

Pandas can't manage both %z and %Z as you can see here. Note that Python's strptime can handle this, but doesn't deal with %Z.

In your case you might want to just peel off the last bit with ser.str and consider opening a feature request.

answered Mar 09 '20 at 14:03

Josh Friedlander

2 Answers2