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pythonpandaspython-datetime

Python Why pd.to_datetime returning timestamp format?

In Python I'm trying to format my date column in a dataframe to float object format. I end up getting Timestamp format instead.

In:

X = []

for row in data:
   date = pd.to_datetime(row[0], format='%Y/%m/%d')
   X.append(date)

print(X)

Out:

[Timestamp('2008-01-02 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2009-01-02 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2010-01-04 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2011-01-03 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2012-01-03 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2013-12-02 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2014-12-01 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2015-01-02 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2016-01-04 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2017-01-03 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2018-01-02 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2019-01-02 00:00:00'),
 Timestamp('2020-01-02 00:00:00')]

How can I change to float object instead of Timestamp? Should I be using datetime.strptime instead?

Solution

  • If you need dates in numeric format, use:

    import datetime

dt = datetime.datetime.strptime('2020/03/08', '%Y/%m/%d')
timestamp = dt.replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc).timestamp()

    Dates will be displayed as UNIX timestamps (float type)

    Edit: if you want to use pandas, see also pandas datetime to unix timestamp seconds