Providing a format argument to DateTime
When working with datasets extracted from different data sources, you may encounter date columns stored in string format, whether from files or databases. In the previous recipe, Working with DatetimeIndex, you explored the pandas.to_datetime() function that can parse various date formats with minimal input. However, you will want more granular control to ensure that the date is parsed correctly. For example, you will now be introduced to the strptime and strftime methods and see how you can specify formatting in pandas.to_datetime() to handle different date formats.
In this recipe, you will learn how to parse strings that represent dates to a datetime or date object (an instance of the class datetime.datetime or datetime.date).
How to do it…
Python's datetime module contains the strptime() method to create datetime or date from a string that contains a date. You will first explore how you can do this in Python and then extend this...
