String to DateTime in Python Correct Format error

Question

I know this question is out there quite a bit, but I cannot find a solution for my case. I have a DataFrame with a column Time in string format that I need to convert to datetime. Ultimately, I want the date as an int for ML purposes, but I cannot seem to get it to datetime first.

I have:

testDate = tripOrig[' Time'][0]
newDate = dt.datetime.strptime(testDate,'%d-%b-%Y %H:%M:%S.%f %Z')

Where the dates are strings like:

05-Jun-2016 00:00:00.000 EDT

For whatever reason, I keep getting the error that it is in the wrong format. I cannot for the life of me figure out what I am doing wrong. I checked the datetime docs over many times but I keep getting:

ValueError: time data '05-Jun-2016 00:00:00.000 EDT' does not match format '%d-%b-%Y %H:%M:%S.%f %Z'

What am I missing here?!?

As another note, I have also tried:

tripOrig['correct date'] = pd.to_datetime(tripOrig[' Time'])

This is very slow, throws a timezone warning, and does not account for seconds when convert to int, so I cannot use it.

How can I get this converted?

the issue is with EDT it's not recognized, swap it with UTC and the code snippet works fine. You need to see the equivalent time zone for EDT recognized by datetime. — Hadi Farah
– Hadi Farah, Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 14:32
According to this page: rdrr.io/r/base/strptime.html. %Z is output only. — Hadi Farah
– Hadi Farah, Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 14:44
Does this answer your question? Python strptime() and timezones? — FObersteiner
– FObersteiner, Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 15:37
another potential duplicate: stackoverflow.com/q/67875823/10197418 — FObersteiner
– FObersteiner, Commented Oct 28, 2021 at 7:07

Sam Dean · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-28 16:19:40Z

0

Using a couple other questions, I found my solution:

Parser must be a string or character stream, not Series

how to convert a string datetime with unknown timezone to timestamp in python

From string to Posix/Unix int:

import datetime as dt
from time import mktime
from dateutil import parser

def timeCorrect(stringDate):
    stamp = parser.parse(stringDate, tzinfos={"EDT": -4 * 3600})
    work = mktime(stamp.timetuple())
    return work
        
tripOrig['Correct Time'] =  tripOrig[' Time'].apply(timeCorrect)

answered Oct 28, 2021 at 16:19

Sam Dean

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