CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondataframedatedatetimedate-formatting
sree
sree

Reputation: 51

How to check if a column has a particular Date format or not using DATETIME in python?

I am new to python. I have a data-frame which has a date column in it, it has different formats. I would like to check if it is following particular date format or not. I it is not following I want to drop it. I have tried using try except and iterating over the rows. But I am looking for a faster way to check if the column is following a particular date format or not. If it is not following then it has to drop. Is there any faster way to do it? Using DATE TIME library?

My code:
Date_format = %Y%m%d
df =
    Date       abc
0  2020-03-22  q
1  03-12-2020  w
2  55552020    e
3  25122020    r
4  12/25/2020  r
5  1212202033  y

Excepted out:
 Date       abc
0  2020-03-22  q

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2276

Answers (1)

JoeCondron
JoeCondron

Reputation: 8906

You could try

pd.to_datetime(df.Date, errors='coerce')
0   2020-03-22
1   2020-03-12
2          NaT
3          NaT
4   2020-12-25
5          NaT

It's easy to drop the null values then

EDIT: For a given format you can still leverage pd.to_datetime:

datetimes = pd.to_datetime(df.Date, format='%Y-%m-%d', errors='coerce')
datetimes
0   2020-03-22
1          NaT
2          NaT
3          NaT
4          NaT
5          NaT


df.loc[datetimes.notnull()]

Also note I am using the format %Y-%m-%d which I think is the one you want based on your expected output (not the one you gave as Date_format)

Upvotes: 2

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