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Pandas has a built-in to_datetime() function that can be used to convert an integer or float representing epoch time (the number of seconds or milliseconds since the start of 1970) into a datetime object. This can be done by passing the epoch time as the argument to the to_datetime() method and specifying the unit of the epoch time (e.g. ‘s’ for seconds or ‘ms’ for milliseconds). Additionally, you can include an optional timezone argument to the to_datetime() method to convert the epoch time to the desired timezone.
You can use the following basic syntax to convert epoch time to a recognizable datetime in pandas:
df['date_column'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date_column'], unit='s')
For example, this syntax will convert an epoch time of 1655439422 to a pandas datetime of 2022-06-17 04:17:02.
This format is more recognizable as a date and a time rather than a long string of numbers.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Convert Epoch to Datetime in Pandas
Suppose we have the following pandas Dataframe that contains information about the total sales of some product on specific dates and times:
import pandas as pd #create DataFrame df = pd.DataFrame({'date': ['1655439422', '1655638422', '1664799422', '1668439411', '1669939422', '1669993948'], 'sales': [120, 150, 224, 290, 340, 184]}) #view DataFrame print(df) date sales 0 1655439422 120 1 1655638422 150 2 1664799422 224 3 1668439411 290 4 1669939422 340 5 1669993948 184
Currently the values in the date column are formatted as epoch times.
To convert the times from epoch to a pandas datetime format, we can use the following syntax:
#convert values in date column from epoch to datetime df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'], unit='s') #view updated DataFrame print(df) date sales 0 2022-06-17 04:17:02 120 1 2022-06-19 11:33:42 150 2 2022-10-03 12:17:02 224 3 2022-11-14 15:23:31 290 4 2022-12-02 00:03:42 340 5 2022-12-02 15:12:28 184
Notice that the values in the date column are now recognizable dates and times.
Note that most epoch times are stored as the number of seconds since 1/1/1970.
By using the argument unit=’s’ in the to_datetime() function, we’re explicitly telling pandas to convert the epoch to a datetime by calculating the number of seconds since 1/1/1970.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the pandas to_datetime() function .