How to Convert Date to Numeric in R

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Here are two ways to convert Date to Numeric in R:

  1. Using the as.numeric() function
  2. Using the lubridate package

Method 1: Using as.numeric() function

Before using the “as.numeric()” function, you must create a date object using the “as.POSIXct()” function and then convert the date to numeric.

Syntax

as.numeric(date)

Parameters

date: It is a date object that needs to be converted to numeric.

Example

today_date <- as.POSIXct("2023-02-24 13:09:00", tz = "GMT")

as.numeric(today_date)

Output

[1] 1677244140

Applying an as.numeric() function to a POSIXct object will return the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 (the Unix epoch) at the specified date and time.

However, you need to know the time zone used in your POSIXct object to get the correct result.

Method 2: Using a lubridate package

To use the lubridate package, you must “install and load” the lubridate package using install.packages(“lubridate”).

After that, you must import the package using the library(lubridate) function at the top of the file.

Then, you can use different functions from the package to extract different time units from your date object.

Syntax

library(lubridate)

#get year value in date object
year(date)

#get seconds value in date object
second(date)

#get minutes value in date object
minute(date)

Example

library(lubridate)

today_date <- as.POSIXct("2023-02-24 13:09:00", tz = "GMT")

hour(today_date)

minute(today_date)

second(today_date)

day(today_date)

month(today_date)

year(today_date)

Output

[1] 13
[1] 9
[1] 0
[1] 24
[1] 2
[1] 2023

That’s it!

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