Python Tutorial: How to use dates & times with pandas

Want to learn more? Take the full course at https://learn.datacamp.com/courses/manipulating-time-series-data-in-python at your own pace. More than a video, you'll learn hands-on coding & quickly apply skills to your daily work. --- In this chapter you will learn about using dates with python pandas. Pandas was developed to analyze financial data that often come as time series, and has powerful functionality to make your life easier The key to this are data types tailored to managing date and time information. These data types represent either points in time, or periods of time. They have attributes and methods that allow you to access and manipulate the time dimension of your data. Any column can contain date or time information, but it is most important as a DataFrame index, because this converts the entire DataFrame into a time series. You will also learn to use many DataFrame methods that leverage date information stored in the index. Let's first take a look at these data types. Using the pandas library and python's builtin datetime class, you can create a pandas Timestamp. You can also use a date string instead of a datetime object, both produce the same result. If you display the timestamp, you'll notice that the time has been automatically set to midnight. The pandas TimeStamp has attributes so you can access various time aspects of your data. You can, for instance, retrieve the year or the name of the weekday. pandas also has a data type for time periods. The period object always has a frequency, with months as the default. It also has a method to convert between frequencies, for instance from monthly to daily frequency. You can convert a period to a timestamp object, and a timestamp back to a period object. You can also do basic date arithmetic. Starting with a period object for January 2017 at monthly frequency, just add the number 2 to get a monthly period for March 2017. Time stamps can also have frequency information. If you create the timestamp fo