Convert datetime.datetime object to days since epoch in Python

Question

I\'ve got a pandas.Series object that might look like this:

import pandas as pd
myVar = pd.Series([\"VLADIVOSTOK 690090\", \"MAHE\", NaN, NaN, \         


        

Answer 1

myVar = pd.Series(["VLADIVOSTOK 690090", "MAHE", "NaN", "NaN", "VLADIVOSTOK 690090", "2000-07-01 00:00:00"])

myVar[5] = pd.to_datetime(myVar[5]) - pd.datetime(1970,1,1)

print(myVar)
0     VLADIVOSTOK 690090
1                   MAHE
2                    NaN
3                    NaN
4     VLADIVOSTOK 690090
5    11139 days 00:00:00
dtype: object

Answer 2

You can convert this to seconds since epoch first, then divide it out by the amount of seconds in a day (86,400 seconds in a day). Please note the integer division here - will not return a float.

from datetime import datetime
now = datetime.now()
seconds = now.strftime("%s") # seconds since epoch
days = int(seconds) / 86400 # days since epoch

I added the import and now as an example of a datetime object I can play with.

Answer 3

I'm not sure where you're getting 36,708 days since the epoch (it's only been 16,644 days since January 1, 1970), but datetime.timedelta objects (used in date arithmetic) have a days attribute:

>>> import datetime
>>> (datetime.datetime.utcnow() - datetime.datetime(1970,1,1)).days
16644