get previous value of pandas datetime index

I had the same problem and thanks to Andy Hayden's solution, I got it working for iterating over rows of a DataFrame with a DatetimeIndex. So I threw it in a small function. It can be used to get previous or future values. If the index doesn't go out of bounds.

def get_row(df, row, n = 0, value = None):
    loc = df.index.get_loc(row[0])
    if value == None:
        return df.iloc[loc + n]
    else:
        return df.iloc[loc + n][value]

So while iterating over the rows, you can call this function.

for row in df.itertuples():
    # Get past value of a whole row
    get_row(df, row, -1)
    # Get past value of a certain column of a row
    get_row(df, row, -1, "column_name")
    # Get future value of a certain column of a row
    get_row(df, row, 1, "column_name")

    # Can be used to get the current row but this is slower than the following function
    # Slower
    get_row(df, row, 0, "column_name")
    # Faster
    row[data.columns.get_loc("column_name") + 1]

Could you just do df.shift().loc[date]?

Here's one way to do it, first grab the integer location of the index key via get_loc:

In [15]: t = pd.Timestamp("2013-02-27 00:00:00+00:00")

In [16]: df1.index.get_loc(t)
Out[16]: 3

And then you can use iloc (to get the integer location, or slice by integer location):

In [17]: loc = df1.index.get_loc(t)

In [18]: df.iloc[loc - 1]
Out[18]: 
Date    2013-02-26 00:00:00
                      -0.15
Name: 2, Dtype: object

In [19]: df1.iloc[slice(max(0, loc-3), min(loc, len(df)))]
        # the min and max feel slightly hacky (!) but needed incase it's within top or bottom 3
Out[19]:                         
Date                    
2013-02-22  0.280001
2013-02-25  0.109999
2013-02-26 -0.150000

See the indexing section of the docs.

---

I'm not quite sure how you set up your DataFrame, but that doesn't look like a Datetime Index to me. Here's how I got the DataFrame (with Timestamp index):

In [11]: df = pd.read_clipboard(sep='\s\s+', header=None, parse_dates=[0], names=['Date', None])

In [12]: df
Out[12]: 
                 Date          
0 2013-02-22 00:00:00  0.280001
1 2013-02-25 00:00:00  0.109999
2 2013-02-26 00:00:00 -0.150000
3 2013-02-27 00:00:00  0.130001
4 2013-02-28 00:00:00  0.139999

In [13]: df1 = df.set_index('Date')

In [14]: df1
Out[14]:                
Date                
2013-02-22  0.280001
2013-02-25  0.109999
2013-02-26 -0.150000
2013-02-27  0.130001
2013-02-28  0.139999