unable to parse date in python pandas

Question

I have column date values as below in the dataframe

Jan 2009
Feb 2003
2017-09-01 00:00:00

but when I use

np.where(df['Date'].astype(str).apply(len) == 8,pd.to_datetime(df['Date'],format="%b %Y"),pd.to_datetime(df['Date']))

it fails with the below error:-

ValueError: time data datetime.datetime(2017, 9, 1, 0, 0) does not match format '%b %Y' (match)

Any ideas?

jezrael · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-30 07:42:43Z

1

I think there are some datetimes in format YYYYMMDD, so length is 8 so not matched %b %Y:

print (df)
                  Date
0             20170901
1             Jan 2009
2             Feb 2003
3  2017-09-01 00:00:00

For me working only to_datetime:

df['Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['Date'])
print (df)
        Date
0 2017-09-01
1 2009-01-01
2 2003-02-01
3 2017-09-01

answered Aug 30, 2018 at 7:42

jezrael

868k103 gold badges1.4k silver badges1.3k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Answer 1