📆 Pandas Date Functionality – Parse, Manipulate, and Extract Time Features

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🧲 Introduction – Why Use Date Functions in Pandas?

Pandas provides rich date/time functionality to parse, generate, and manipulate temporal data using the datetime module and DatetimeIndex. Whether you’re handling time-based columns, performing time math, or extracting date parts, Pandas makes it simple and efficient.

🎯 In this guide, you’ll learn:

• How to parse and format dates
• Extract components like year, month, day
• Perform date arithmetic
• Use vectorized .dt accessor for fast operations

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📥 1. Parse Strings into DateTime Objects

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({
    'Date': ['2023-01-01', '2023-01-05', '2023-01-10']
})

df['Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['Date'])

✔️ Converts string to proper datetime64 format, enabling time operations.

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🧮 2. Extract Date Components with .dt

df['Year'] = df['Date'].dt.year
df['Month'] = df['Date'].dt.month
df['Day'] = df['Date'].dt.day
df['Weekday'] = df['Date'].dt.day_name()

✔️ Extracts year, month, day, weekday names, etc.

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🕒 3. Extract Time Components (if time included)

df['Hour'] = df['Date'].dt.hour
df['Minute'] = df['Date'].dt.minute
df['Second'] = df['Date'].dt.second

✔️ Applies to datetime with timestamps.

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🔁 4. Date Arithmetic

df['Next Week'] = df['Date'] + pd.Timedelta(days=7)
df['Prev Day'] = df['Date'] - pd.Timedelta(days=1)

✔️ Enables shifting dates forward or backward.

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📊 5. Calculate Date Differences

df['Delta'] = df['Date'].diff()

✔️ Computes difference between consecutive rows.

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🗂️ 6. Filter by Date Ranges

df[df['Date'] > '2023-01-05']

✔️ Filter using string-like comparisons with datetime columns.

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🧱 7. Floor, Ceil, Round Dates

df['Date'].dt.floor('D')     # Floor to nearest day
df['Date'].dt.ceil('H')      # Ceil to nearest hour
df['Date'].dt.round('min')   # Round to nearest minute

✔️ Useful for rounding timestamps in time-based reports.

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📅 8. Create Custom Date Ranges

pd.date_range(start='2023-01-01', periods=5, freq='D')

✔️ Generates regular date sequences with specified frequency.

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🧾 9. Convert to Different Formats

df['Formatted'] = df['Date'].dt.strftime('%d-%b-%Y')

✔️ Format dates for export, display, or string comparison.

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📌 Summary – Key Takeaways

Pandas offers a comprehensive and efficient set of tools to work with date/time values, helping you parse, analyze, and manipulate time series data like a pro.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• Use pd.to_datetime() to parse date strings
• Use .dt accessor to extract year, month, day, hour, etc.
• Perform date math with Timedelta and .diff()
• Round/floor/ceil timestamps for interval binning
• Use strftime() to customize display formats

⚙️ Real-world relevance: Common in time series preprocessing, temporal grouping, log analysis, and feature extraction for ML models.

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❓ FAQs – Date Functions in Pandas

❓ What’s the best way to convert strings to datetime?
Use:

pd.to_datetime(df['column'])

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❓ How do I extract just the month or year?
Use:

df['column'].dt.month
df['column'].dt.year

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❓ Can I format dates into strings?
Yes:

df['column'].dt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

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❓ How do I create a date range for an index?
Use:

pd.date_range(start='2023-01-01', periods=7)

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❓ Can I round timestamps to the nearest interval?
✅ Yes:

df['Date'].dt.round('H')  # Nearest hour

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