Get the Hour from timestamp in Pandas

Let's learn how to get the hour from the timestamp in Pandas DataFrame.

Extract Hour from Timestamps in Pandas DataFrame

Pandas offers convenient tools to extract specific time components from timestamps in your data, such as the hour, which is useful for time-based analysis.

1. Convert the timestamp to datetime: First, ensure the column is in datetime format using pd.to_datetime(). If the column is not already in this format, this step converts it to a proper datetime object that can be used for time-based operations.
2. Extract the hour: After converting to datetime, use the .dt.hour accessor to extract the hour component of the timestamp. This returns the hour in 24-hour format as an integer.

import pandas as pd

# Sample DataFrame with timestamp
data = {'timestamp': ['2024-11-29 08:45:32', '2024-11-29 13:20:45', '2024-11-29 18:10:10']}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Convert the 'timestamp' column to datetime
df['timestamp'] = pd.to_datetime(df['timestamp'])

# Extract the hour from the 'timestamp' column
df['hour'] = df['timestamp'].dt.hour

# Display the DataFrame with the extracted hour
print(df)

            timestamp  hour
0 2024-11-29 08:45:32     8
1 2024-11-29 13:20:45    13
2 2024-11-29 18:10:10    18

You can also extract minutes, seconds and day of the week using:

• Get the Minute: df['timestamp'].dt.minute
• Get the Second: df['timestamp'].dt.second
• Get the Day of the Week: df['timestamp'].dt.dayofweek

Extract Hour from Current Timestamp

To begin with, let's look at how to extract the hour from the current timestamp.

import pandas as pd 

# Get current timestamp
date = pd.Timestamp.now() 
print("Current Timestamp:", date)

# Extract the Hour from the timestamp
hour = date.hour
print("Hour:", hour)

Current Timestamp: 2024-11-29 11:13:42.385191
Hour: 11

Here, we use pd.Timestamp.now() to get the current timestamp and then access the hour attribute to retrieve the hour.

Extract Hour from a Specific Timestamp

You can also create a timestamp with a specific date and time and extract the hour.

import pandas as pd

# Create timestamp for a specific date and time
date = pd.Timestamp(year=2020, month=7, day=21, hour=6, minute=30, second=44, tz='Asia/Kolkata')
print("Timestamp:", date)

# Extract the Hour from the timestamp
print("Hour:", date.hour)

Timestamp: 2020-07-21 06:30:44+05:30
Hour: 6

In this example, the timestamp is created with specific details, including the timezone. The hour attribute extracts the hour part from the timestamp.

Handling Timestamps in CSV Files

Often, timestamp data is read from CSV files. Here’s how to extract the hour from such data.

Dataset Link:xyz.csv

import pandas as pd

# Read data from CSV
df = pd.read_csv('xyz.csv')

# Convert to datetime
df['dateTime'] = pd.to_datetime(df['dateTime'])

# Extract Hour from Timestamp
df['hour'] = df['dateTime'].dt.hour
print(df.head())

Output

This demonstrates how to read timestamp data from a CSV file, convert it to datetime format, and extract the hour from each timestamp.