Fast parsing with fasttime

The fasttime package provides a single function fastPOSIXct(), designed to read in datetimes formatted according to ISO 8601. Because it only reads in one format, and doesn't have to guess a format, it is really fast!

You'll see how fast in this exercise by comparing how fast it reads in the dates from the Auckland hourly weather data (over 17,000 dates) to lubridates ymd_hms().

To compare run times you'll use the microbenchmark() function from the package of the same name. You pass in as many arguments as you want each being an expression to time.

This exercise is part of the course

Working with Dates and Times in R

Exercise instructions

We've loaded the datetimes from the Auckland hourly data as strings into the vector dates.

Examine the structure of dates to verify it is a string and in the ISO 8601 format.
Parse dates with fasttime and pipe to str() to verify fastPOSIXct parses them correctly.
Now to compare timing, call microbenchmark where the first argument uses ymd_hms() to parse dates and the second uses fastPOSIXct().

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

library(microbenchmark)
library(fasttime)

# Examine structure of dates
str(___)

# Use fastPOSIXct() to parse dates
fastPOSIXct(___) %>% str()

# Compare speed of fastPOSIXct() to ymd_hms()
microbenchmark(
  ymd_hms = ___(dates),
  fasttime = ___(dates),
  times = 20)

Edit and Run Code

This exercise is part of the course

Working with Dates and Times in R

IntermediateSkill Level

5.0+

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R doesn't know something is a date or time unless you tell it. In this chapter you'll learn about some of the ways R stores dates and times by exploring how often R versions are released, and how quickly people download them. You'll also get a sneak peek at what you'll learn in the following chapters.

Exercise 1: Introduction to dates Exercise 2: Recognizing ISO 8601 dates Exercise 3: Specifying dates Exercise 4: Automatic import Exercise 5: Why use dates?Exercise 6: Plotting Exercise 7: Arithmetic and logical operators Exercise 8: What about times?Exercise 9: Getting datetimes into R Exercise 10: Datetimes behave nicely too Exercise 11: Why lubridate?

Dates and times come in a huge assortment of formats, so your first hurdle is often to parse the format you have into an R datetime. This chapter teaches you to import dates and times with the lubridate package. You'll also learn how to extract parts of a datetime. You'll practice by exploring the weather in R's birthplace, Auckland NZ.

Exercise 1: Parsing dates with lubridate Exercise 2: Selecting the right parsing function Exercise 3: Specifying an order with `parse_date_time()`Exercise 4: Weather in Auckland Exercise 5: Import daily weather data Exercise 6: Import hourly weather data Exercise 7: Extracting parts of a datetime Exercise 8: What can you extract?Exercise 9: Adding useful labels Exercise 10: Extracting for plotting Exercise 11: Extracting for filtering and summarizing Exercise 12: Rounding datetimes Exercise 13: Practice rounding Exercise 14: Rounding with the weather data

Getting datetimes into R is just the first step. Now that you know how to parse datetimes, you need to learn how to do calculations with them. In this chapter, you'll learn the different ways of representing spans of time with lubridate and how to leverage them to do arithmetic on datetimes. By the end of the chapter, you'll have calculated how long it's been since the first man stepped on the moon, generated sequences of dates to help schedule reminders, calculated when an eclipse occurs, and explored the reigns of monarch's of England (and which ones might have seen Halley's comet!).

Exercise 1: Taking differences of datetimes Exercise 2: How long has it been?Exercise 3: How many seconds are in a day?Exercise 4: Time spans.Exercise 5: Adding or subtracting a time span to a datetime Exercise 6: Duration or Period?Exercise 7: Arithmetic with timespans Exercise 8: Generating sequences of datetimes Exercise 9: The tricky thing about months Exercise 10: Intervals Exercise 11: Examining intervals. Reigns of kings and queens Exercise 12: Comparing intervals and datetimes Exercise 13: Converting to durations and periods

You now know most of what you need to tackle data that includes dates and times, but there are a few other problems you might encounter in practice. In this final chapter you'll learn a little more about these problems by returning to some of the earlier data examples and learning how to handle time zones, deal with times when you don't care about dates, parse dates quickly, and output dates and times.

Exercise 1: Time zones Exercise 2: Setting the timezone Exercise 3: Viewing in a timezone Exercise 4: Timezones in the weather data Exercise 5: Times without dates Exercise 6: More on importing and exporting datetimes Exercise 7: Fast parsing with fasttime

Current Exercise

Exercise 8: Fast parsing with lubridate::fast_strptime Exercise 9: Outputting pretty dates and times Exercise 10: Wrap-up