how to get only date from dataframe column with date time value

Question

My dataframe contents are like:

df['Date']
2016/12/31 PM 04:50:00
2016/12/30 AM 02:20:00
2016/12/2 PM 01:51:00
2016/12/10 PM 03:33:00

How to get only date value? original dtype is object, I want 2016/12/31 PM 04:50:00 → 2016/12/31

Answer 1

Use strftime

Minimal example

>>> import pandas as pd

>>> rng = pd.date_range('1/1/2017', periods=72, freq='H')

>>> rng[0]
Timestamp('2017-01-01 00:00:00', offset='H')

>>> rng[0].strftime('%Y/%m/%d')
'2017/01/01

NB: Depending on the exact datatypes, you may need to explicitly cast.

>>> df = pd.DataFrame()
>>> df['rng'] = rng
>>> pd.DatetimeIndex(df['rng']).strftime('%Y/%m/%d')
array(['2017/01/01', '2017/01/01', '2017/01/01', '2017/01/01',
...