How can I sort a DataFrame by date in Python?

Question

I am trying to sort the data listed below by date using df.sort_values(by='date') , however this will not work. Any ideas how I can do this to make sure it is sorted correctly?

  symbol date open close high low 0 GOOG 2007-01-03 232.77 233.56 238.09 230.32 1 GOOG 2007-01-05 241.01 243.35 243.51 238.82 2 GOOG 2007-01-04 234.27 241.39 241.73 233.94 ... 2692 GOOG 2017-11-30 1022.37 1021.41 1028.49 1015.00 2693 GOOG 2017-11-29 1042.68 1021.66 1044.08 1015.65 2694 GOOG 2017-12-01 1015.80 1010.17 1022.49 1002.02 

Answer 1

df.sort_values() returns a sorted DF, but it is not sorted.

So either use:

 df = df.sort_values(by='date') 

or

 df.sort_values(by='date', inplace=True) 

Answer 2

Try

 df['Date']=pd.to_datetime(df.Date) df.sort_values(['Date']) 

Answer 3

If you have a dataframe as below:

 df = pd.DataFrame({'col1' : ['A', 'A', 'B', np.nan, 'D', 'C'], 'col2' : [2, 1, 9, 8, 7, 4], 'col3': [0, 1, 9, 4, 2, 3], }) 

Here's how you sort it:

 df = df.sort_values(by=['col1']) 

A similar problem with the solution for stackoverflow: how to sort pandas data from a single Panda column link: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.2/generated/pandas.DataFrame.sort.html