Working with DatetimeIndex
The pandas library has many options and features to simplify tedious tasks when working with time-series data, dates, and time.
When working with time-series data in Python, it is common to load into a pandas DataFrame with an index of type DatetimeIndex. As an index, the DatetimeIndex class extends pandas DataFrame capabilities to work more efficiently and intelligently with time-series data. This was demonstrated numerous times in Chapter 2, Reading Time Series Data from Files, and Chapter 3, Reading Time Series Data from Databases.
By the end of this recipe, you will appreciate pandas' rich set of date functionality to handle almost any representation of date/time in your data. Additionally, you will learn how to use different functions in pandas to convert date-like objects to a DatetimeIndex.
How to do it…
In this recipe, you will explore Python's datetime module and learn about the Timestamp and DatetimeIndex classes and the relationship...
