Specify correct dtypes to pandas.read_csv for datetimes and booleans

Question

I am loading a csv file into a Pandas DataFrame. For each column, how do I specify what type of data it contains using the dtype argument?

• I can do it with numeric data (code at bottom)...
• But how do I specify time data...
• and categorical data such as factors or booleans? I have tried np.bool_ and pd.tslib.Timestamp without luck.

Code:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
df = pd.read_csv(<file-name>, dtype={'A': np.int64, 'B': np.float64})

Answer 1

There are a lot of options for read_csv which will handle all the cases you mentioned. You might want to try dtype={'A': datetime.datetime}, but often you won't need dtypes as pandas can infer the types.

For dates, then you need to specify the parse_date options:

parse_dates : boolean, list of ints or names, list of lists, or dict
keep_date_col : boolean, default False
date_parser : function

In general for converting boolean values you will need to specify:

true_values  : list  Values to consider as True
false_values : list  Values to consider as False

Which will transform any value in the list to the boolean true/false. For more general conversions you will most likely need

converters : dict. optional Dict of functions for converting values in certain columns. Keys can either be integers or column labels

Though dense, check here for the full list: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/generated/pandas.io.parsers.read_csv.html