Convert timedelta64[ns] column to seconds in Python Pandas DataFrame

Question

A pandas DataFrame column duration contains timedelta64[ns] as shown. How can you convert them to seconds?

0   00:20:32
1   00:23:1         


        

Answer 1

This works properly in the current version of Pandas (version 0.14):

In [132]: df[:5]['duration'] / np.timedelta64(1, 's')
Out[132]: 
0    1232
1    1390
2    1495
3     797
4    1132
Name: duration, dtype: float64

Here is a workaround for older versions of Pandas/NumPy:

In [131]: df[:5]['duration'].values.view('

timedelta64 and datetime64 data are stored internally as 8-byte ints (dtype '). So the above views the timedelta64s as 8-byte ints and then does integer division to convert nanoseconds to seconds.

Note that you need NumPy version 1.7 or newer to work with datetime64/timedelta64s.