CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpandasdatetimetype-conversion
Boomshakalaka
Boomshakalaka

Reputation: 521

How to convert a column with null values to datetime format?

How I convert the df to pandas datetime datatype? (with null value)

datet = pd.DataFrame(['2018-09-07 00:00:00','2017-09-15 00:00:00',''],columns=['Mycol'])

datet['Mycol'] = datet['Mycol'].apply(lambda x: 
                                dt.datetime.strptime(x,'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

But it returns error: ValueError: time data '' does not match format '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'

How can I resolve that error? (keep the null as blank)

Thanks!

Upvotes: 5

Views: 13896

Answers (2)

Vishnu Kunchur
Vishnu Kunchur

Reputation: 1726

Just do:

datet['Mycol'] = pd.to_datetime(datet['Mycol'], errors='coerce')

This will automatically convert the null to an NaT value.

Output:

0   2018-09-07
1   2017-09-15
2          NaT

Upvotes: 11

Jørgen Frøland
Jørgen Frøland

Reputation: 374

Its because your third column contains an empty string. Remove that and it works. It cant convert the empty string with the match format.

datet = pd.DataFrame(['2018-09-07 00:00:00','2017-09-15 00:00:00'],columns=['Mycol'])

datet['Mycol'] = datet['Mycol'].apply(lambda x: datetime.datetime.strptime(x,'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'))

Upvotes: 0

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