CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpandas
Sarah Connors
Sarah Connors

Reputation: 471

find most recent date in pandas dataframe

I have a csv file, that I read into a pandas dataframe. The date and times are listed in a column "DateTime". I want to find the most recent and the least recent date to create an index to create a time series graph. Does pandas have a function that will return the most recent and the least recent date?

Edit:
I already tried using min and max. They give incorrect answers. 

>>> f['Start Date']  
Trip ID  
4576       8/29/2013 14:13  
4607       8/29/2013 14:42  
4130       8/29/2013 10:16  
4251       8/29/2013 11:29  
4299       8/29/2013 12:02  
4927       8/29/2013 18:54  
4500       8/29/2013 13:25  
4563       8/29/2013 14:02  
4760       8/29/2013 17:01  
4258       8/29/2013 11:33  
4549       8/29/2013 13:52  
4498       8/29/2013 13:23  
4965       8/29/2013 19:32  
4557       8/29/2013 13:57  
4386       8/29/2013 12:31  
...  
198757     2/28/2014 20:40  
198760     2/28/2014 20:59  
198761     2/28/2014 20:59  
198763     2/28/2014 21:32  
198764     2/28/2014 21:32  
198765     2/28/2014 21:34  
198766     2/28/2014 21:41  
198767     2/28/2014 21:50  
198768     2/28/2014 21:54  
198770     2/28/2014 22:19  
198771     2/28/2014 22:15  
198772     2/28/2014 22:38  
198773     2/28/2014 22:45  
198774     2/28/2014 23:01  
198775     2/28/2014 23:20  
Name: Start Date, Length: 144015, dtype: object  
>>> min(f['Start Date'])  
'1/1/2014 0:14'  
>>> max(f['Start Date'])  
'9/9/2013 9:59'

Upvotes: 35

Views: 90386

Answers (1)

Kathirmani Sukumar
Kathirmani Sukumar

Reputation: 10980

First convert your date column in to a datetime column using

>> df['StartDate'] = pd.to_datetime(df['StartDate'])

You then can find the oldest date and most recent date using

>> least_recent_date = df['StartDate'].min()
>> most_recent_date = df['StartDate'].max()

Upvotes: 72

Related Questions