Python / Pandas / Numpy - Direct calculation of number of business days between two dates excluding holidays

Question

Is there a better / more direct way to calculate this than the following?

# 1. Set up the start and end date for which you         


        

Answer 1

If you put the index you created in a dataframe, you can use resample to fill in the gaps. The offset passed to .resample() can include things like business days and even (custom) calendars:

from pandas.tseries.holiday import USFederalHolidayCalendar

C = pd.offsets.CustomBusinessDay(calendar=USFederalHolidayCalendar())

start_date = '01JAN1986'
end_date = '31DEC1987'

(
pd.DataFrame(index=pd.to_datetime([start_date, end_date]))
    .resample(C, closed='right') 
    .asfreq()
    .index  
    .size
) - 1

The size of the index - 1 then gives us the amount of days.