How to Solve Python AttributeError: ‘Series’ object has no attribute ‘to_datetime’

n Python, a Pandas Series is a one-dimensional labelled array capable of holding data of any type. Pandas Series is the same as a column in an Excel spreadsheet. If you have values in a Series that you want to convert to datetime, you cannot use to_datetime() directly on the Series. If you try to call to_datetime() directly on a Series object, you will raise the AttributeError: ‘Series’ object has no attribute ‘to_datetime’. to_datetime() is a built-in method to Pandas, which can accept a Series object as an argument, for example, pandas.to_datetime(series).

This tutorial will go through the error in detail and how to solve it with code examples.

---

AttributeError: ‘Series’ object has no attribute ‘to_datetime’

AttributeError occurs in a Python program when we try to access an attribute (method or property) that does not exist for a particular object. The part “‘Series’ object has no attribute ‘to_datetime’” tells us that the Series object we are handling does not have the to_datetime attribute. The to_datetime() method is a built-in Pandas method that we can use to convert a Series argument to a datetime type. We cannot call to_datetime on a Series like series.to_datetime(). Instead, we have to pass the Series to the to_datetime() method.

Example

Let’s look at an example with a Series containing epoch timestamp values. We want to use to_datetime() method to convert the values to human-readable dates. Let’s look at the original Series object:

import pandas as pd

s = pd.Series([1490195805, 1598495821, 1237495321, 1444899912])

print(s)

0    1490195805
1    1598495821
2    1237495321
3    1444899912
dtype: int64

The Series contains integer values representing epoch timestamp values. Let’s look at the code to convert the values to datetime:

s_datetime = s.to_datetime(unit='s')

print(s_datetime)

Let’s run the code to see the result:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-6-0b06c7ebfe5b> in <module>
      3 s = pd.Series([1490195805, 1598495821, 1237495321, 1444899912])
      4 
----> 5 s_datetime = s.to_datetime(unit='s')
      6 
      7 print(s_datetime)

~/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/core/generic.py in __getattr__(self, name)
   5581         ):
   5582             return self[name]
-> 5583         return object.__getattribute__(self, name)
   5584 
   5585     def __setattr__(self, name: str, value) -> None:

AttributeError: 'Series' object has no attribute 'to_datetime'

The Python interpreter raises the AttributeError because to_datetime is an attribute of Pandas, not Series.

Solution

We need to pass the Series to the to_datetime() method as an argument to solve this error. Let’s look at the revised code:

import pandas as pd

s = pd.Series([1490195805, 1598495821, 1237495321, 1444899912])

# Unit of the epoch timestamps is in seconds, set unit to 's'

s_datetime = pd.to_datetime(s, unit='s')

print(s_datetime)

Let’s run the code to see the result:

0   2017-03-22 15:16:45
1   2020-08-27 02:37:01
2   2009-03-19 20:42:01
3   2015-10-15 09:05:12
dtype: datetime64[ns]

We converted the epoch timestamp values to human-readable dates using to_datetime(). The dtype of the Series object is datetime64.

Summary

Congratulations on reading to the end of this tutorial! The AttributeError: ‘Series’ object has no attribute ‘to_datetime’ occurs when you try to call the to_datetime() method on a Series object. to_datetime() is a built-in method, which means you can call it directly once you have imported Pandas. For example:

import pandas as pd

pd.to_datetime(...)

You can find out more about the uses of pandas.to_datetime() by reading the Pandas documentation.

For further reading on Series, go to the articles:

• How to Solve Python AttributeError: ‘str’ object has no attribute ‘contains’.
• How to Solve Python AttributeError: ‘Series’ object has no attribute ‘lower’.
• How to Solve Python AttributeError: ‘DataFrame’ object has no attribute ‘sort’

For further reading on the datetime module, go to the article:

How to Solve Python AttributeError: ‘datetime.datetime’ has no attribute ‘datetime’

To learn more about Python for data science and machine learning, go to the online courses page on Python for the most comprehensive courses available.

Have fun and happy researching!