convert string date to numeric for all values in column using pandas python

Question

I need to transform "Jan 11, 2017 9:00 PM" to 2017-01-11 21:00:00 for all values in ColumnA.

Is there an easy way / function for doing this in python using pandas?

Answer 1

to_datetime seems to handle this just fine:

In [6]:
pd.to_datetime('Jan 11, 2017 9:00 PM')

Out[6]:
Timestamp('2017-01-11 21:00:00')

So you can just overwrite your column using the output from this function:

df['ColumnA'] = pd.to_datetime(df['ColumnA'])

And just to clarify that the dates and months are correct here:

In [8]:
pd.to_datetime('Jan 11, 2017 9:00 PM').day

Out[8]:
11

In [9]:
pd.to_datetime('Jan 11, 2017 9:00 PM').month

Out[9]:
1