In python pandas, how can I convert this formatted date string to datetime

Question

I have tried several ways of using to_datetime, but so far I can only get it to return the dtype as "object"

pd.to_datetime(pd.Series(['28Dec2013 19:23:15']),dayfirst=True)

The return from this command is:

0    28Dec2013 19:23:15
dtype: object

Answer 1

You can pass a format parameter to the to_datetime function.

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.to_datetime(pd.Series(['28Dec2013 19:23:15']),format="%d%b%Y %H:%M:%S",dayfirst=True)
>>> df
0   2013-12-28 19:23:15
dtype: datetime64[ns]