Python Forum

Hi,

I am trying to figure out how to pass a date inputted at a prompt by the user to pandas to search by date. I have both the search and the input prompt working separately but not together. I will show you what I mean. And maybe someone can tell me how to properly pass the date to pandas for the search.

This is how I successfully use pandas to extract rows in an excel sheet if any cell in column emr_first_access_date is greater than or equal to '2019-09-08'

I do this successfully with the following code:

import pandas as pd
HISorigFile = "C:\\folder\\inputfile1.xlsx"
#opens excel worksheet
df = pd.read_excel(HISorigFile, sheet_name='Non Live', skiprows=8)
#locates the columns I want to write to file including  date column emr_first_access_date if greater than or equal to '2019-09-08'
data = df.loc[df['emr_first_access_date'] >= '2019-09-08', ['site_name','subs_num','emr_id', 'emr_first_access_date']]
#sorts the data
datasort = data.sort_values("emr_first_access_date",ascending=False)
#this creates the file (data already sorted) in panda with date and time. 
datasort.to_excel(r'C:\\folder\sitesTestedInLastWeek.xlsx', index=False, header=True)

However, the date above is hardcoded of course. So, I need the user running this script to input the date. I created a very basic working input prompt with the following:

import datetime
#prompts for input date
TestedDateBegin = input('Enter beginning date to search for sites tested in YYYY-MM-DD format')
year, month, day = map(int, TestedDateBegin.split('-'))
date1 = datetime.date(year, month, day)

Obviously I want to pass TestedDateBegin to pandas, changing the pertinent code line:

data = df.loc[df['emr_first_access_date'] >= '2019-09-08', ['site_name','subs_num','emr_id', 'emr_first_access_date']]

to something like:

data = df.loc[df[b]['emr_first_access_date'] >= 'TestedDateBegin', ['site_name','subs_num','emr_id', 'emr_first_access_date']]

Obviously this doesn't work. But how do I proceed? I am very new to programming so I not always clear how to proceed. Does the date inputted in TestedDateBegin need to be added to a return? Or should it be put in a single item list? What is the right approach? Thx!

This is resolved.

I had to remove the single quotes around TestedDateBegin as python, of course, interpreted that as a string and not a variable. Simple!

data = df.loc[df[b]['emr_first_access_date'] >= TestedDateBegin,['site_name','subs_num','emr_id', 'emr_first_access_date']]