DOC: Fix invalid Sphinx cross-references in older whatsnew RST files

[Copilot]

Running sphinx-build with nitpicky = True produces warnings for broken cross-references in whatsnew files for versions 0.13–0.19, where referenced objects have since been renamed, moved, or removed.

Changes

For each broken reference, either correct it to point to the current documented API or replace with double-backtick literals when no valid target exists.

Corrected to valid references

• ~pandas.io.json.json_normalize → :func:pandas.json_normalize`` (v0.13.0)
• ~pandas.io.parsers.ParserWarning → :class:pandas.errors.ParserWarning`` (v0.14.0)
• boxplot → :func:pandas.plotting.boxplot`` (v0.14.0)
• ~pandas.io.read_sas (meth) → :func:pandas.read_sas`` (v0.17.0)
• ~Resampler.ffill/backfill/asfreq (wrong module context) → full pandas.api.typing.Resampler.* paths; backfill corrected to bfill (v0.18.0)
• union_categoricals → :func:pandas.api.types.union_categoricals`` (v0.19.0)
• :func:datetime.datetime → `:class:`python:datetime.datetime (v0.19.0)

Replaced with backtick literals (objects removed/not in any intersphinx target)

• Panel.apply, Panel.shift, Panel.major_xs, Panel.minor_xs — Panel removed (v0.13.1, v0.14.0)
• create_engine, parallel_coordinates, andrews_curves, DateRange, HDFStore.select_column, Timestamp.offset, get_data_yahoo, get_data_google, rolling_sum/max/min (v0.14.0)
• All rolling_*, expanding_*, ewm* top-level function references; describe, set_names, set_labels, set_levels (v0.15.0)
• io.wb.download (v0.15.1), SparseSeries.to_coo/from_coo (v0.16.0), pandas.io.gbq.to_gbq (v0.17.0, v0.17.1), py._path.local.LocalPath (v0.17.1), Resampler.fillna (v0.18.0), union_categorical, read_gbq, to_gbq, Panel4D.to_xarray (v0.19.0)

Original prompt

---

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>DOC: Fix incorrect Sphinx cross references in older, whatsnew restructred text files.</issue_title>
<issue_description>The top level doc/ directory contains reStructuredText files who's names will end in .rst and are used to build the pandas documentation using Sphinx. These files can contain Sphinx cross-referencing syntax to create a link to where the reference is documented. Specifically, the Python cross-referencing syntax is used. Cross references should reference currently documented pandas objects or objects in other libaries specified in the intersphinx_mapping variable in doc/source/conf.py

When sphinx-build command is run with nitpicky = True set in the doc/source/conf.py, the logs will specify the file location, line number, and invalid cross references. Below is a subset of invalid cross references from older whatsnew files

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.13.0.rst:749: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: pandas.io.json.json_normalize [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.13.1.rst:32: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: pandas.Panel.apply [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.13.1.rst:241: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: pandas.Panel.apply [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.13.1.rst:339: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: pandas.Panel.apply [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:330: WARNING: py:class reference target not found: pandas.io.parsers.ParserWarning [ref.class]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:455: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: create_engine [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:643: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: parallel_coordinates [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:647: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: parallel_coordinates [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:647: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: andrews_curves [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:664: WARNING: py:class reference target not found: DateRange [ref.class]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:672: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: HDFStore.select_column [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:673: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: Timestamp.offset [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:674: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: get_data_yahoo [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:674: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: get_data_google [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:678: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_sum [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:732: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: Panel.shift [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:738: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: Panel.major_xs [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:738: WARNING: py:meth reference target not found: Panel.minor_xs [ref.meth]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:742: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: parallel_coordinates [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:746: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: parallel_coordinates [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:746: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: andrews_curves [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:759: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: boxplot [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:848: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_max [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.14.0.rst:848: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_min [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:400: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_min [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:400: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_max [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:400: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_cov [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:400: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_corr [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:427: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_max [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:427: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_min [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:427: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_sum [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:427: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_mean [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:427: WARNING: py:func reference target not found: rolling_median [ref.func]
doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.0.rst:427: WARNING: py:func reference target not ...

</details>



<!-- START COPILOT CODING AGENT SUFFIX -->

- Fixes pandas-dev/pandas#64458

<!-- START COPILOT CODING AGENT TIPS -->
---

🔒 GitHub Advanced Security automatically protects Copilot coding agent pull requests. You can protect all pull requests by enabling Advanced Security for your repositories. [Learn more about Advanced Security.](https://gh.io/cca-advanced-security)

[mroeschke]

/preview

[github-actions]

Website preview of this PR available at: https://pandas.pydata.org/preview/pandas-dev/pandas/64459/

[mroeschke]

@copilot change the module paths to reference pandas.api.typing instead of pandas.core.resample

[Copilot]

Updated in 0c5480e — the Resampler method references now use pandas.api.typing.Resampler instead of pandas.core.resample.Resampler.

[mroeschke]

/preview

[github-actions]

Website preview of this PR available at: https://pandas.pydata.org/preview/pandas-dev/pandas/64459/