A Python method for extracting the date from a PubMed article into a Pandas datetime object

pubmed_date.py

import requests
import datetime
import pandas as pd
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

__author__ = "Alex H. Wagner"


def pandas_datetime_from_pmid(pmid):
    """Returns a pandas datetime object corresponding to the NCBI reported publication date for a PubMed ID (pmid)"""
    resp = requests.get('https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/{0}?report=xml'.format(pmid))
    resp.raise_for_status()

    soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.content, "xml")
    xml = soup.find('pre').text
    better_soup = BeautifulSoup(xml, "xml")
    date = better_soup.PubDate

    if date:
        month = datetime.datetime.strptime(date.Month.text, '%b').month
        year = int(date.Year.text)
        if date.Day:
            day = int(date.Day.text)
        else:
            day = 1
        return pd.datetime(year, month, day)
    else:
        return pd.NaT

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pmid = 26531824
    published = pandas_datetime_from_pmid(pmid)
    print("DGIdb (PMID: {}) was published on {}.".format(pmid, published.date()))