How do i get datetime into a tableau extract with pantab - tableau-api

Question

I have this code:
import pantab
import pandas as pd
import datetime
df = pd.DataFrame([
[datetime.date(2018,2,20), 4],
[datetime.date(2018,2,20), 4],
], columns=["date", "num_of_legs"])
pantab.frame_to_hyper(df, "example.hyper", table="animals")
which causes this error:
TypeError: Invalid value "datetime.date(2018, 2, 20)" found (row 0 column 0)
Is there a fix?

Answer 1

This has apparently been a problem since time 2020. You have to know which columns are datetime columns because panda dtypes treat dates and strings as objects. There's a world where data scientists don't care about dates, but not mine, apparently. Anyway, here's the solution awaiting the day when pandas makes the date dtype:
[https://github.com/innobi/pantab/issues/100][1]
And just to reduce it down to do what I did:
def createHyper(xlsx, filename, tablename):
for name in xlsx.columns:
if 'date' in name.lower():
xlsx[name] = pd.to_datetime(xlsx[name],errors='coerce',utc=True)
pantab.frame_to_hyper(xlsx,filename,table=tablename)
return open(filename, 'rb')
errors = 'coerce' makes it so you can have dates like 1/1/3000 which is handy in a world of scd2 tables
utc = True was necessary for me because my dates were timezone sensitive, yours may not be.
I screwed up the hyperlink, It's not working. Damn it. Thank you to the anonymous editor who will inevitable show up and fix it. I'm very sorry.