You can use the following basic syntax to convert a column from DateTime to string in pandas:
df['column_name'].dt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Convert DateTime to String in Pandas
Suppose we have the following pandas DataFrame that shows the sales made by some store on four different days:
import pandas as pd #create DataFrame df = pd.DataFrame({'day': pd.to_datetime(pd.Series(['20210101', '20210105', '20210106', '20210109'])), 'sales': [1440, 1845, 2484, 2290]}) #view DataFrame df day sales 0 2021-01-01 1440 1 2021-01-05 1845 2 2021-01-06 2484 3 2021-01-09 2290
We can use the dtypes function to view the data type of each column in the DataFrame:
#view data type of each column
df.dtypes
day datetime64[ns]
sales int64
dtype: object
We can see that the “day” column has a DateTime class.
To convert “day” into a string, we can use the following syntax:
#convert 'day' column to string
df['day'] = df['day'].dt.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
#view updated DataFrame
df
day sales
0 2021-01-01 1440
1 2021-01-05 1845
2 2021-01-06 2484
3 2021-01-09 2290
We can use the dtypes function again to verify that the “day” column is now a string:
#view data type of each column
df.dtypes
day object
sales int64
dtype: object
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the dt.strftime() function here.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common conversions in Python:
How to Convert Datetime to Date in Pandas
How to Convert Columns to DateTime in Pandas
How to Convert Timestamp to Datetime in Pandas
