Convert character string to date

[lgsf]

Hello,

How do I convert the started_at and ended_at columns from a string to a date?

sapply(month1, class)
ride_id rideable_type started_at ended_at start_station_name
"character" "character" "character" "character" "character"
start_station_id end_station_name end_station_id start_lat start_lng
"character" "character" "character" "numeric" "numeric"
end_lat end_lng member_casual
"numeric" "numeric" "character"

Thanks,
LG

[FJCC]

The lubridate package has good functions for this. if the dates are currently shown in m/d/y format, the you could do

library(lubridate)
month1$started_at <- mdy(month1$started_at)

There is a dmy() function if they are in d/m/y format.
For more detailed help, please give more details about the date format.

[lgsf]

Hey FJCC,
The string is in UTC:
2021-01-09 14:39:33

Ultimately the goal is to calculate the difference of the times and create a ride_time column.
Thanks,
LG

[FJCC]

For that you would use

library(lubridate)
month1$started_at <- ymd_hms(month1$started_at)

[lgsf]

That worked perfectly. Thanks!