Getting the closest date to a given date

Question

Given this base date:

base_date = \"10/29 06:58 AM\"

I want to find a tuple within the list that contains the closest date to the bas

Answer 1

You can consider putting the dates list into a Pandas index and then use 'truncate' or 'get_loc' function.

import pandas as pd

##Initial inputs
list_date = [('10/30 02:18 PM', '-103', '-107'),('10/29 02:15 AM', '-101', '-109') , ('10/30 02:17 PM', '+100', '-110'), \
             ]  # reordered to show the method is input order insensitive
base_date = "10/29 06:58 AM"


##Make a data frame with data
df=pd.DataFrame(list_date)
df.columns=['date','val1','val2']
dateIndex=pd.to_datetime(df['date'], format='%m/%d %I:%M %p')
df=df.set_index(dateIndex) 
df=df.sort_index(ascending=False) #earliest comes on top 

##Find the result
base_dateObj=pd.to_datetime(base_date, format='%m/%d %I:%M %p')
result=df.truncate(after=base_dateObj).iloc[-1]  #take the bottom value, or the 1st after the base date
(result['date'],result['val1'], result['val2']) # result is ('10/30 02:17 PM', '+100', '-110')

Reference: this link