Often you may want to sort a pandas DataFrame by a column that contains dates. Fortunately this is easy to do using the sort_values() function.

This tutorial shows several examples of how to use this function in practice.

Example 1: Sort by Date Column

Suppose we have the following pandas DataFrame:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({'sales': [4, 11, 13, 9],
                   'customers': [2, 6, 9, 7],
                   'date': ['2020-01-25', '2020-01-18', '2020-01-22', '2020-01-21']})

#view DataFrame
print(df)

   sales  customers        date
0      4          2  2020-01-25
1     11          6  2020-01-18
2     13          9  2020-01-22
3      9          7  2020-01-21

First, we need to use the to_datetime() function to convert the ‘date’ column to a datetime object:

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

Next, we can sort the DataFrame based on the ‘date’ column using the sort_values() function:

df.sort_values(by='date')

        sales	customers	date
1	11	6	  2020-01-18
3	9	7	  2020-01-21
2	13	9	  2020-01-22
0	4	2	  2020-01-25

By default, this function sorts dates in ascending order. However, you can specify ascending=False to instead sort in descending order:

df.sort_values(by='date', ascending=False)

	sales	customers	date
0	4	2	  2020-01-25
2	13	9	  2020-01-22
3	9	7	  2020-01-21
1	11	6	  2020-01-18

Example 2: Sort by Multiple Date Columns

Suppose we have the following pandas DataFrame:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({'person': ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'],
                   'order_date': ['2020-01-15', '2020-01-15', '2020-01-20', '2020-01-20'],
                   'receive_date': ['2020-01-25', '2020-01-18', '2020-01-22', '2020-01-21']})

#view DataFrame
print(df)

  person  order_date receive_date
0      A  2020-01-15   2020-01-25
1      B  2020-01-15   2020-01-18
2      C  2020-01-20   2020-01-22
3      D  2020-01-20   2020-01-21

We can use the sort_values function to sort the DataFrame by multiple columns by simply providing multiple column names to the function:

#convert both date columns to datetime objects
df[['order_date','receive_date']] = df[['order_date','receive_date']].apply(pd.to_datetime)

#sort DateFrame by order_date, then by receive_date
df.sort_values(by=['order_date', 'receive_date'])

        person	order_date	receive_date
1	B	2020-01-15	2020-01-18
0	A	2020-01-15	2020-01-25
3	D	2020-01-20	2020-01-21
2	C	2020-01-20	2020-01-22

The DataFrame is now sorted in ascending order by order_date, then in ascending order by receive_date.

How to Filter Pandas DataFrame Rows by Date
How to Convert Datetime to Date in Pandas
How to Convert Columns to DateTime in Pandas