A timestamp is a representation of a specific point in time, expressed as a combination of date and time information. In data processing, timestamps are used to note the occurrence of events, record the time at which data was generated or modified, and provide a chronological ordering of data.

Pandas Timestamp is a data structure used to handle timestamps in time-series data analysis.

Converting Pandas Timestamps to Datetime Objects

Importing Pandas

import pandas as pd

Using the date() function

This method extracts the date information from the Timestamp object and returns a new datetime.date object. It’s useful if you only care about the date and not the time.

# Sample dataset using dictionaries
data = {
    'timestamp': ['2024-01-01 12:00:00', '2024-01-02 14:30:00', '2024-01-03 08:45:00'],
    'value': [10, 20, 15]
}

import pandas as pd

# Create a Timestamp object
ts = pd.Timestamp("2024-02-05 10:00:00")

# Extract the date using the date() method
date_obj = ts.date()

print(type(ts))
print(type(date_obj))

Output:

<class 'pandas._libs.tslibs.timestamps.Timestamp'>
<class 'datetime.date'>

Using the to_pydatetime() function

First, we create a timestamp object using Components (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, microsecond) and convert it to a DateTime object using the Pandas.to_pydatetime() function.

# Create a Pandas Timestamp object
ts =pd.Timestamp(year=2024, month=1, day=28, hour=15, minute=30, second=0, microsecond=0)

# Convert the Timestamp to a Python datetime object
datetime_obj = ts.to_pydatetime()

print(datetime_obj)
print(type(datetime_obj))

Output:

2024-01-28 15:30:00-05:00
<class 'datetime.datetime'>

Pandas Timestamp To Datetime – FAQs

How to Convert String Timestamp to Datetime in Python?

To convert a string representation of a timestamp into a datetime object, you can use the datetime.strptime() method from the datetime module, which allows you to specify the format of the timestamp:

from datetime import datetime

# Example string timestamp
timestamp_str = '2021-09-01 12:45:00'

# Convert string to datetime
datetime_obj = datetime.strptime(timestamp_str, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print(datetime_obj)

How to Convert Timestamp into String?

To convert a datetime object back into a string with a specified format, use the strftime() method:

# Convert datetime object to string
timestamp_str = datetime_obj.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print(timestamp_str)

How to Calculate Date from Timestamp?

If you have a Unix timestamp (number of seconds since January 1, 1970), you can convert it into a readable date using datetime.fromtimestamp():

# Example Unix timestamp
unix_timestamp = 1630496700

# Convert timestamp to datetime
date_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(unix_timestamp)
print(date_time)

How to Convert Date to Datetime in Python?

If you start with a date object or a date string and want to convert it to a datetime object, here’s how you can do it:

from datetime import date

# If you have a date object
date_obj = date(2021, 9, 1)

# Convert date to datetime at the beginning of the day
datetime_obj = datetime.combine(date_obj, datetime.min.time())
print(datetime_obj)

If you’re converting from a date string, use strptime() as shown in the first example but with the appropriate format.

What is the Difference Between Datetime and Timestamp in Python?

• Datetime: In Python, datetime refers to the datetime object in the datetime module, which represents both a date and a time in one object. It’s used for more complex date and time manipulations in Python.
• Timestamp: A timestamp generally refers to a specific point in time often represented as a string or a number. In Unix systems, it is commonly the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 (also known as Unix time).