How to get the closest single row after a specific datetime index using Python Pandas

Question

DataFrame I have:

            A   B   C 
2012-01-01  1   2   3 
2012-01-05  4   5   6 
2012-01-10  7   8   9 
2012-01-15  10  11  12 

What I am using now:

date_after = dt.datetime( 2012, 1, 7 )
frame.ix[date_after:].ix[0:1]
Out[1]: 
            A  B  C
2012-01-10  7  8  9

Is there any better way of doing this? I do not like that I have to specify .ix[0:1] instead of .ix[0], but if I don't the output changes to a TimeSeries instead of a single row in a DataFrame. I find it harder to work with a rotated TimeSeries back on top of the original DataFrame.

Without .ix[0:1]:

frame.ix[date_after:].ix[0]
Out[1]: 
A    7
B    8
C    9
Name: 2012-01-10 00:00:00

Thanks,

John

Answer 1

You might want to go directly do the index:

i = frame.index.searchsorted(date)
frame.ix[frame.index[i]]

A touch verbose but you could put it in a function. About as good as you'll get (O(log n))

Answer 2

Couldn't resist answering this, even though the question was asked, and answered, in 2012, by Wes himself, and again in 2015, by ajsp. Yes, besides 'truncate', you can also use get_loc with the option 'backfill' to get the nearest date after the specific date. By the way, if you want to nearest date before the specific date, use 'ffill'. If you just want nearby, use 'nearest'.

df.iloc[df.index.get_loc(datetime.datetime(2016,2,2),method='backfill')]