Python: Selecting days in-between with input date by user-CodePudding

I am trying to take some values from a Covid database and I wrote the following code which works as I want (see below) but I have a question for you after the code:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


def main():

  pd.set_option('display.max_rows', None)          
  df = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_confirmed_global.csv')

  df=df[df["Country/Region"]=="Italy"]

  df=df.drop(columns=["Province/State","Lat","Long","Country/Region"])
  df = df.columns.to_frame().T.append(df, ignore_index=True)
  df.columns = range(len(df.columns))
  df=df.T    
  df = df.rename(columns={0: 'date', 1: 'nuovi_casi'})
  df['nuovi_casi'] = df['nuovi_casi'].diff(periods=1).fillna(1)
  df = df[(df['date'] > '11/26/21') & (df['date'] <= '12/8/21')]

  print(df)

  dati_giornalieri=list(df.nuovi_casi)
  sommatoriaitalia=(sum(dati_giornalieri)/1390000000)*100
  
  print(sommatoriaitalia)
  print(dati_giornalieri)

Now I want to add this part of the code to ask the user what is the starting date and the finish date:

    def main():
      
      start_date=str(input("Enter starting date in format mm/dd/yy"))          
      end_date=str(input("Enter ending date in format mm/dd/yy"))             

      pd.set_option('display.max_rows', None)          
      df = pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_confirmed_global.csv')

      df=df[df["Country/Region"]=="Italy"]
      df=df.drop(columns=["Province/State","Lat","Long","Country/Region"])
      df = df.columns.to_frame().T.append(df, ignore_index=True)
      df.columns = range(len(df.columns))
      df=df.T    
      df = df.rename(columns={0: 'date', 1: 'nuovi_casi'})
      df['nuovi_casi'] = df['nuovi_casi'].diff(periods=1).fillna(1)
      df = df[(df['date'] > start_date) & (df['date'] <= end_date)]

but in the line df = df[(df['date'] > start_date) & (df['date'] <= end_date)] there is an error because he cannot compare date to string. I actually tried importing datetime:

start_date = datetime.strptime(input('Enter Start date in the format m/d/y'), '%m/%d/%y')

but I actually had the same result because there is still a problem because for some reason it only consider a day per month or something similar but anyway the result is not as wanted.

How to solve the problem, selecting the days in between? Thanks.

CodePudding user response：

Convert the values to datetime before comparing:

start_date = pd.to_datetime(start_date, format="%m/%d/%y")
end_date = pd.to_datetime(end_date, format="%m/%d/%y")
df["date"] = pd.to_datetime(df["date"], format="%m/%d/%y")

df = df[df["date"].between(start_date, end_date, inclusive="right")]