dask dataframe how to convert column to to_datetime

Question

I am trying to convert one column of my dataframe to datetime. Following the discussion here https://github.com/dask/dask/issues/863 I tried the following code:

Answer 1

If the datetime is in a non ISO format then map_partition yields better results:

import dask
import pandas as pd
from dask.distributed import Client
client = Client()

ddf = dask.datasets.timeseries()
ddf = ddf.assign(datetime=ddf.index.astype(object))
ddf = (ddf.assign(datetime_nonISO = ddf['datetime'].astype(str).str.split(' ')
                                 .apply(lambda x: x[1]+' '+x[0], meta=('object'))) 

%%timeit
ddf.datetime = ddf.datetime.astype('M8[s]')
ddf.compute()

11.3 s ± 719 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

ddf = dask.datasets.timeseries()
ddf = ddf.assign(datetime=ddf.index.astype(object))
ddf = (ddf.assign(datetime_nonISO = ddf['datetime'].astype(str).str.split(' ')
                                 .apply(lambda x: x[1]+' '+x[0], meta=('object'))) 


%%timeit
ddf.datetime_nonISO = (ddf.datetime_nonISO.map_partitions(pd.to_datetime
                       ,  format='%H:%M:%S %Y-%m-%d', meta=('datetime64[s]')))
ddf.compute()

8.78 s ± 599 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

ddf = dask.datasets.timeseries()
ddf = ddf.assign(datetime=ddf.index.astype(object))
ddf = (ddf.assign(datetime_nonISO = ddf['datetime'].astype(str).str.split(' ')
                                 .apply(lambda x: x[1]+' '+x[0], meta=('object'))) 

%%timeit
ddf.datetime_nonISO = ddf.datetime_nonISO.astype('M8[s]')
ddf.compute()

1min 8s ± 3.65 s per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)