How to specify date format when using pandas.to_csv?

Question

The default output format of to_csv() is:

12/14/2012  12:00:00 AM

I cannot figure out how to output only the date part with the specific format:

20121214

or date and time in two separate columns in the csv file:

20121214,  084530

The documentation is too brief to give me any clue as to how to do these. Can anyone help?

Answer 1

You have to use strftime to save them in separate columns:

df['date'] = df['datetime'].apply(lambda x: x.strftime('%d%m%Y'))

df['time'] = df['datetime'].apply(lambda x: x.strftime('%H%M%S'))

and to export particular column to csv, refer the following code:

df[['date', 'time', ... ]].to_csv('df.csv')

For more information regarding the same refer to the following link: https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior

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