Converting Dataframe Object into Date Python

Question

A python dataframe 'dff' containing data imported from SAS is having a date field whose type is showing as below by python:

dff.effvdate.head()
Out[47]: 
0    b'09JUL2013'
1    b'17OCT2013'
2    b'03MAR2014'
3    b'08MAY2014'
4    b'10MAR2015'
Name: effvdate, dtype: object

I am trying to convert this date to datetype as below:

dff['REPORT_MONTH'] =[dt.datetime.strptime(d,"%d%b%Y").date() for d in dff['effvdate']]

showing this error

TypeError: strptime() argument 1 must be str, not bytes

As i am new to python, need help on this.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

0

The error TypeError: strptime() argument 1 must be str, not bytes gives you the information you need to know! d is in bytes, not a string. you should cast d to string.

dff['REPORT_MONTH'] =[dt.datetime.strptime(d.decode('UTF-8'),"%d%b%Y").date() for d in dff['effvdate']]

should work.

see What does the 'b' character do in front of a string literal?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

Community

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answered Jul 21 '16 at 03:15

honi

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Thanks a lot. It works. But when I save this date in my dataframe still it shows it as 'object', Why?. What actually 'object' is? – FarrukhJ Jul 21 '16 at 08:22
an object is a thing that has attributes. which is basically everything in python. – honi Jul 21 '16 at 14:39
you have a dataframe object, which itself contains date objects – honi Jul 21 '16 at 14:40
OK. Got it. its a class object having attribute and possibly some functions. Thanks a lot. – FarrukhJ Jul 22 '16 at 03:57
you should accept the answer if you found it solved your problem. – honi Jul 25 '16 at 14:39
Thanks for letting me know as I a new user of this forum I didnt know about this. I hope I did it correctly. – FarrukhJ Jul 26 '16 at 21:54

Converting Dataframe Object into Date Python

1 Answers1