convert year and month name into datetime column for pandas dataframe

Question

How do i convert year and month name into datetime column for this dataframe:

 region  year    Months
0  alabama  2018   January
1  alabama  2018  February
2  alabama  2018     March
3  alabama  2018     April
4  alabama  2018       May

When I do this:

pd.to_datetime(df_sub['year'] * 10000 + df_sub['Months'] * 100, format='%Y%m')

I get this error:

*** TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'

Answer 1

You can convert year column to string, add Months and use parameter format in to_datetime by http://strftime.org/:

print (pd.to_datetime(df_sub['year'].astype(str)  + df_sub['Months'], format='%Y%B'))
0   2018-01-01
1   2018-02-01
2   2018-03-01
3   2018-04-01
4   2018-05-01
dtype: datetime64[ns]