Title: Handling Time Zones
Slug: handling_time_zones
Summary: How to handle timezones for machine learning in Python.
Date: 2017-09-11 12:00
Category: Machine Learning
Tags: Preprocessing Dates And Times
Authors: Chris Albon

Preliminaries



In [2]:

    
# Load libraries
import pandas as pd
from pytz import all_timezones

View Timezones



In [4]:

    
# Show ten time zones
all_timezones[0:10]









    Out[4]:





['Africa/Abidjan',
 'Africa/Accra',
 'Africa/Addis_Ababa',
 'Africa/Algiers',
 'Africa/Asmara',
 'Africa/Asmera',
 'Africa/Bamako',
 'Africa/Bangui',
 'Africa/Banjul',
 'Africa/Bissau']

Create Timestamp With Time Zone



In [5]:

    
# Create datetime
pd.Timestamp('2017-05-01 06:00:00', tz='Europe/London')









    Out[5]:





Timestamp('2017-05-01 06:00:00+0100', tz='Europe/London')

Create Timestamp Without Time Zone



In [6]:

    
# Create datetime
date = pd.Timestamp('2017-05-01 06:00:00')

Add Time Zone



In [7]:

    
# Set time zone
date_in_london = date.tz_localize('Europe/London')

Convert Time Zone



In [8]:

    
# Change time zone
date_in_london.tz_convert('Africa/Abidjan')









    Out[8]:





Timestamp('2017-05-01 05:00:00+0000', tz='Africa/Abidjan')