ValueError: time data 'r' does not match format '%Y%m%d:%H%M' (match)

Question:

I am trying to read data from an online database and convert the first row to a timestamp.
Although using the right format string in to_datetime, but I got the error

time data 'r' does not match format '%Y%m%d:%H%M' (match)

Here is the code:

import requests
import pandas as pd
import csv
from datetime import datetime


lat= 39  #Latitude
lon=-4 #Longitude
mountingplace = "building" 
angle=15 
aspect = 0 

url = "https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/api/seriescalc?lat={}&lon={}&outputformat=csv&browser=1&startyear=2015&endyear=2016&peakpower=1&mountingplace={}&angle={}&pvcalculation=1&aspect={}&loss=5".format(lat,lon,mountingplace,angle, aspect)

pv=pd.read_csv(url, delimiter=',', lineterminator='n', skiprows=10)#, date_parser=custom_date_parser)

pv['time']=pd.to_datetime(pv.time, format="%Y%m%d:%H%M")
Asked By: Homer

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Answers:

pv=pd.read_csv(url, delimiter=',', lineterminator='n', skiprows=10)#, date_parser=custom_date_parser)

Here you are assuming file ending is newline (n), I inspect file and it seem to be using carriagereturn-newline (rn) endings. Just let read_csv to act automatically there, i.e. do

pv=pd.read_csv(url, delimiter=',', skiprows=10)#, date_parser=custom_date_parser)

Also .time have some data not compliant with %Y%m%d:%H%M format namely

17546                           H_sun: Sun height (degree)
17547            T2m: 2-m air temperature (degree Celsius)
17548                   WS10m: 10-m total wind speed (m/s)
17549    Int: 1 means solar radiation values are recons...
17550                             PVGIS (c) European Union

So you need to inform pandas.to_datetime what do with it unless fatal malfunction is desired behavior, you might do e.g.

pv['time_parsed']=pd.to_datetime(pv.time, format="%Y%m%d:%H%M", errors="coerce")

then non-compliant values will be turned into NaTs.

Answered By: Daweo