Calculate Pandas DataFrame Time Difference Between Two Columns in Hours and Minutes

Question

I have two columns, fromdate and todate, in a dataframe.

import pandas as pd

data = {'todate': [pd.Timestamp('2014-01-24 13:03:12.050000'), pd.Timestamp('2014-01-27 11:57:18.240000'), pd.Timestamp('2014-01-23 10:07:47.660000')],
        'fromdate': [pd.Timestamp('2014-01-26 23:41:21.870000'), pd.Timestamp('2014-01-27 15:38:22.540000'), pd.Timestamp('2014-01-23 18:50:41.420000')]}

df = pd.DataFrame(data)

I add a new column, diff, to find the difference between the two dates using

df['diff'] = df['fromdate'] - df['todate']

I get the diff column, but it contains days, when there's more than 24 hours.

                   todate                fromdate                   diff
0 2014-01-24 13:03:12.050 2014-01-26 23:41:21.870 2 days 10:38:09.820000
1 2014-01-27 11:57:18.240 2014-01-27 15:38:22.540 0 days 03:41:04.300000
2 2014-01-23 10:07:47.660 2014-01-23 18:50:41.420 0 days 08:42:53.760000

How do I convert my results to only hours and minutes (i.e. days are converted to hours)?

Answer 1

Pandas timestamp differences returns a datetime.timedelta object. This can easily be converted into hours by using the *as_type* method, like so

import pandas
df = pandas.DataFrame(columns=['to','fr','ans'])
df.to = [pandas.Timestamp('2014-01-24 13:03:12.050000'), pandas.Timestamp('2014-01-27 11:57:18.240000'), pandas.Timestamp('2014-01-23 10:07:47.660000')]
df.fr = [pandas.Timestamp('2014-01-26 23:41:21.870000'), pandas.Timestamp('2014-01-27 15:38:22.540000'), pandas.Timestamp('2014-01-23 18:50:41.420000')]
(df.fr-df.to).astype('timedelta64[h]')

to yield,

0    58
1     3
2     8
dtype: float64