python - datetime to string with series in pandas

Question

I need to make this simple thing:

dates = p.to_datetime(p.Series(['20010101', '20010331']), format = '%Y%m%d')
dates.str

But I get an error. How should I transform from datetime to string?

Answer 1

There is no str accessor for datetimes and you can't do dates.astype(str) either, you can call apply and use datetime.strftime:

In [73]:

dates = pd.to_datetime(pd.Series(['20010101', '20010331']), format = '%Y%m%d')
dates.apply(lambda x: x.strftime('%Y-%m-%d'))
Out[73]:
0    2001-01-01
1    2001-03-31
dtype: object

You can change the format of your date strings using whatever you like: strftime() and strptime() Behavior.

Update

As of version 0.17.0 you can do this using dt.strftime

dates.dt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

will now work