Python | Working with date and time using Pandas

Difficulty Level : Medium
Last Updated : 07 May, 2019

While working with data, encountering time series data is very usual. Pandas is a very useful tool while working with time series data.

Pandas provide a different set of tools using which we can perform all the necessary tasks on date-time data. Let’s try to understand with the examples discussed below.

Code #1: Create a dates dataframe

import pandas as pd
  
# Create dates dataframe with frequency  
data = pd.date_range('1/1/2011', periods = 10, freq ='H')
  
data

Output:

Code #2: Create range of dates and show basic features

# Create date and time with dataframe
data = pd.date_range('1/1/2011', periods = 10, freq ='H')
  
x = datetime.now()
x.month, x.year

Output:

(9, 2018)

Datetime features can be divided into two categories.The first one time moments in a period and second the time passed since a particular period. These features can be very useful to understand the patterns in the data.

Divide a given date into features –

pandas.Series.dt.year returns the year of the date time.
pandas.Series.dt.month returns the month of the date time.
pandas.Series.dt.day returns the day of the date time.
pandas.Series.dt.hour returns the hour of the date time.
pandas.Series.dt.minute returns the minute of the date time.

Refer all datatime properties from here.

Code #3: Break data and time into separate features

# Create date and time with dataframe
rng = pd.DataFrame()
rng['date'] = pd.date_range('1/1/2011', periods = 72, freq ='H')
  
# Print the dates in dd-mm-yy format
rng[:5]
  
# Create features for year, month, day, hour, and minute
rng['year'] = rng['date'].dt.year
rng['month'] = rng['date'].dt.month
rng['day'] = rng['date'].dt.day
rng['hour'] = rng['date'].dt.hour
rng['minute'] = rng['date'].dt.minute
  
# Print the dates divided into features
rng.head(3)

Output:

Code #4: To get the present time, use Timestamp.now() and then convert timestamp to datetime and directly access year, month or day.

# Input present datetime using Timestamp
t = pandas.tslib.Timestamp.now()
t

Timestamp('2018-09-18 17:18:49.101496')

# Convert timestamp to datetime
t.to_datetime()

datetime.datetime(2018, 9, 18, 17, 18, 49, 101496)

# Directly access and print the features
t.year
t.month
t.day
t.hour
t.minute
t.second

Let’s analyze this problem on a real dataset uforeports.

import pandas as pd
  
url = 'http://bit.ly/uforeports'
  
# read csv file
df = pd.read_csv(url)           
df.head()

Output:

# Convert the Time column to datatime format
df['Time'] = pd.to_datetime(df.Time)
  
df.head()

# shows the type of each column data
df.dtypes

City                       object
Colors Reported            object
Shape Reported             object
State                      object
Time               datetime64[ns]
dtype: object

# Get hour detail from time data
df.Time.dt.hour.head()

0    22
1    20
2    14
3    13
4    19
Name: Time, dtype: int64

# Get name of each date
df.Time.dt.weekday_name.head()

0     Sunday
1     Monday
2     Sunday
3     Monday
4    Tuesday
Name: Time, dtype: object

# Get ordinal day of the year
df.Time.dt.dayofyear.head()

0    152
1    181
2     46
3    152
4    108
Name: Time, dtype: int64

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Python | Working with date and time using Pandas