Convert UTC timestamp to local timezone issue in pandas

Question

I'm trying to convert a Unix UTC timestamp to a local date format in Pandas. I've been looking through a few solutions but I can't quite get my head around how to do this properly.

I have a dataframe with multiple UTC timestamp columns which all need to be converted to a local timezone. Let's say EU/Berlin.

I first convert all the timestamp columns into valid datetime columns with the following adjustments:

df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date'], unit='s') This works and gives me the following outcome e.g. 2019-01-18 15:58:25 if I know try to adjust the timezone for this Date Time I have tried both:

df['date'].tz_localize('UTC').tz_convert('Europe/Berlin') and df['date'].tz_convert('Europe/Berlin')

In both cases the error is: TypeError: index is not a valid DatetimeIndex or PeriodIndex and I don't understand why.

The problem must be that the DateTime column is not on the index. But even when I use df.set_index('date') and after I try the above options it doesn't work and I get the same error.

Also, if it would work it seems that this method only allows the indexed DateTime to be timezone adjusted. How would I then adjust for the other columns that need adjustment?

Looking to find some information on how to best approach these issues once and for all! Thanks

Answer 1

You should first specify that it is a datetime by adding the .dt. to a non index

df['date'] = df['date'].dt.tz_localize('UTC').dt.tz_convert('Europe/Berlin')

This should be used if the column is not the index column.