Solving problem is about exposing yourself to as many situations as possible like How to unnest (explode) a column in a pandas DataFrame? and practice these strategies over and over. With time, it becomes second nature and a natural way you approach any problems in general. Big or small, always start with a plan, use other strategies mentioned here till you are confident and ready to code the solution.
In this post, my aim is to share an overview the topic about How to unnest (explode) a column in a pandas DataFrame?, which can be followed any time. Take easy to follow this discuss.
I have the following DataFrame where one of the columns is an object (list type cell):
df=pd.DataFrame({'A':[1,2],'B':[[1,2],[1,2]]})
df
Out[458]:
A B
0 1 [1, 2]
1 2 [1, 2]
My expected output is:
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
3 2 1
4 2 2
What should I do to achieve this?
Related question
pandas: When cell contents are lists, create a row for each element in the list
Good question and answer but only handle one column with list(In my answer the self-def function will work for multiple columns, also the accepted answer is use the most time consuming apply , which is not recommended, check more info When should I ever want to use pandas apply() in my code?)
Answer #1:
I know object columns type makes the data hard to convert with a pandas function. When I received the data like this, the first thing that came to mind was to ‘flatten’ or unnest the columns .
I am using pandas and python functions for this type of question. If you are worried about the speed of the above solutions, check user3483203’s answer, since it’s using numpy and most of the time numpy is faster . I recommend Cpython and numba if speed matters.
Method 0 [pandas >= 0.25]
Starting from pandas 0.25, if you only need to explode one column, you can use the pandas.DataFrame.explode function:
df.explode('B')
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
0 2 1
1 2 2
Given a dataframe with an empty list or a NaN in the column. An empty list will not cause an issue, but a NaN will need to be filled with a list
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 2, 3, 4],'B': [[1, 2], [1, 2], [], np.nan]})
df.B = df.B.fillna({i: [] for i in df.index}) # replace NaN with []
df.explode('B')
A B
0 1 1
0 1 2
1 2 1
1 2 2
2 3 NaN
3 4 NaN
Method 1
apply + pd.Series (easy to understand but in terms of performance not recommended . )
df.set_index('A').B.apply(pd.Series).stack().reset_index(level=0).rename(columns={0:'B'})
Out[463]:
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
0 2 1
1 2 2
Method 2
Using repeat with DataFrame constructor , re-create your dataframe (good at performance, not good at multiple columns )
df=pd.DataFrame({'A':df.A.repeat(df.B.str.len()),'B':np.concatenate(df.B.values)})
df
Out[465]:
A B
0 1 1
0 1 2
1 2 1
1 2 2
Method 2.1
for example besides A we have A.1 …..A.n. If we still use the method(Method 2) above it is hard for us to re-create the columns one by one .
Solution : join or merge with the index after ‘unnest’ the single columns
s=pd.DataFrame({'B':np.concatenate(df.B.values)},index=df.index.repeat(df.B.str.len()))
s.join(df.drop('B',1),how='left')
Out[477]:
B A
0 1 1
0 2 1
1 1 2
1 2 2
If you need the column order exactly the same as before, add reindex at the end.
s.join(df.drop('B',1),how='left').reindex(columns=df.columns)
Method 3
recreate the list
pd.DataFrame([[x] + [z] for x, y in df.values for z in y],columns=df.columns)
Out[488]:
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 2 2
If more than two columns, use
s=pd.DataFrame([[x] + [z] for x, y in zip(df.index,df.B) for z in y])
s.merge(df,left_on=0,right_index=True)
Out[491]:
0 1 A B
0 0 1 1 [1, 2]
1 0 2 1 [1, 2]
2 1 1 2 [1, 2]
3 1 2 2 [1, 2]
Method 4
using reindex or loc
df.reindex(df.index.repeat(df.B.str.len())).assign(B=np.concatenate(df.B.values))
Out[554]:
A B
0 1 1
0 1 2
1 2 1
1 2 2
#df.loc[df.index.repeat(df.B.str.len())].assign(B=np.concatenate(df.B.values))
Method 5
when the list only contains unique values:
df=pd.DataFrame({'A':[1,2],'B':[[1,2],[3,4]]})
from collections import ChainMap
d = dict(ChainMap(*map(dict.fromkeys, df['B'], df['A'])))
pd.DataFrame(list(d.items()),columns=df.columns[::-1])
Out[574]:
B A
0 1 1
1 2 1
2 3 2
3 4 2
Method 6
using numpy for high performance:
newvalues=np.dstack((np.repeat(df.A.values,list(map(len,df.B.values))),np.concatenate(df.B.values)))
pd.DataFrame(data=newvalues[0],columns=df.columns)
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 2 2
Method 7
using base function itertools cycle and chain: Pure python solution just for fun
from itertools import cycle,chain
l=df.values.tolist()
l1=[list(zip([x[0]], cycle(x[1])) if len([x[0]]) > len(x[1]) else list(zip(cycle([x[0]]), x[1]))) for x in l]
pd.DataFrame(list(chain.from_iterable(l1)),columns=df.columns)
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 2 2
Generalizing to multiple columns
df=pd.DataFrame({'A':[1,2],'B':[[1,2],[3,4]],'C':[[1,2],[3,4]]})
df
Out[592]:
A B C
0 1 [1, 2] [1, 2]
1 2 [3, 4] [3, 4]
Self-def function:
def unnesting(df, explode):
idx = df.index.repeat(df[explode[0]].str.len())
df1 = pd.concat([
pd.DataFrame({x: np.concatenate(df[x].values)}) for x in explode], axis=1)
df1.index = idx
return df1.join(df.drop(explode, 1), how='left')
unnesting(df,['B','C'])
Out[609]:
B C A
0 1 1 1
0 2 2 1
1 3 3 2
1 4 4 2
Column-wise Unnesting
All above method is talking about the vertical unnesting and explode , If you do need expend the list horizontal, Check with pd.DataFrame constructor
df.join(pd.DataFrame(df.B.tolist(),index=df.index).add_prefix('B_'))
Out[33]:
A B C B_0 B_1
0 1 [1, 2] [1, 2] 1 2
1 2 [3, 4] [3, 4] 3 4
Updated function
def unnesting(df, explode, axis):
if axis==1:
idx = df.index.repeat(df[explode[0]].str.len())
df1 = pd.concat([
pd.DataFrame({x: np.concatenate(df[x].values)}) for x in explode], axis=1)
df1.index = idx
return df1.join(df.drop(explode, 1), how='left')
else :
df1 = pd.concat([
pd.DataFrame(df[x].tolist(), index=df.index).add_prefix(x) for x in explode], axis=1)
return df1.join(df.drop(explode, 1), how='left')
Test Output
unnesting(df, ['B','C'], axis=0)
Out[36]:
B0 B1 C0 C1 A
0 1 2 1 2 1
1 3 4 3 4 2
Answer #2:
Option 1
If all of the sublists in the other column are the same length, numpy can be an efficient option here:
vals = np.array(df.B.values.tolist())
a = np.repeat(df.A, vals.shape[1])
pd.DataFrame(np.column_stack((a, vals.ravel())), columns=df.columns)
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 2 2
Option 2
If the sublists have different length, you need an additional step:
vals = df.B.values.tolist()
rs = [len(r) for r in vals]
a = np.repeat(df.A, rs)
pd.DataFrame(np.column_stack((a, np.concatenate(vals))), columns=df.columns)
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 2 2
Option 3
I took a shot at generalizing this to work to flatten N columns and tile M columns, I’ll work later on making it more efficient:
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1,2,3], 'B': [[1,2], [1,2,3], [1]],
'C': [[1,2,3], [1,2], [1,2]], 'D': ['A', 'B', 'C']})
A B C D
0 1 [1, 2] [1, 2, 3] A
1 2 [1, 2, 3] [1, 2] B
2 3 [1] [1, 2] C
def unnest(df, tile, explode):
vals = df[explode].sum(1)
rs = [len(r) for r in vals]
a = np.repeat(df[tile].values, rs, axis=0)
b = np.concatenate(vals.values)
d = np.column_stack((a, b))
return pd.DataFrame(d, columns = tile + ['_'.join(explode)])
unnest(df, ['A', 'D'], ['B', 'C'])
A D B_C
0 1 A 1
1 1 A 2
2 1 A 1
3 1 A 2
4 1 A 3
5 2 B 1
6 2 B 2
7 2 B 3
8 2 B 1
9 2 B 2
10 3 C 1
11 3 C 1
12 3 C 2
Functions
def wen1(df):
return df.set_index('A').B.apply(pd.Series).stack().reset_index(level=0).rename(columns={0: 'B'})
def wen2(df):
return pd.DataFrame({'A':df.A.repeat(df.B.str.len()),'B':np.concatenate(df.B.values)})
def wen3(df):
s = pd.DataFrame({'B': np.concatenate(df.B.values)}, index=df.index.repeat(df.B.str.len()))
return s.join(df.drop('B', 1), how='left')
def wen4(df):
return pd.DataFrame([[x] + [z] for x, y in df.values for z in y],columns=df.columns)
def chris1(df):
vals = np.array(df.B.values.tolist())
a = np.repeat(df.A, vals.shape[1])
return pd.DataFrame(np.column_stack((a, vals.ravel())), columns=df.columns)
def chris2(df):
vals = df.B.values.tolist()
rs = [len(r) for r in vals]
a = np.repeat(df.A.values, rs)
return pd.DataFrame(np.column_stack((a, np.concatenate(vals))), columns=df.columns)
Timings
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from timeit import timeit
res = pd.DataFrame(
index=['wen1', 'wen2', 'wen3', 'wen4', 'chris1', 'chris2'],
columns=[10, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10000],
dtype=float
)
for f in res.index:
for c in res.columns:
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 2], 'B': [[1, 2], [1, 2]]})
df = pd.concat([df]*c)
stmt = '{}(df)'.format(f)
setp = 'from __main__ import df, {}'.format(f)
res.at[f, c] = timeit(stmt, setp, number=50)
ax = res.div(res.min()).T.plot(loglog=True)
ax.set_xlabel("N")
ax.set_ylabel("time (relative)")
Performance
Answer #3:
Exploding a list-like column has been simplified significantly in pandas 0.25 with the addition of the explode() method:
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 2], 'B': [[1, 2], [1, 2]]})
df.explode('B')
Out:
A B
0 1 1
0 1 2
1 2 1
1 2 2
Answer #4:
One alternative is to apply the meshgrid recipe over the rows of the columns to unnest:
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
def unnest(frame, explode):
def mesh(values):
return np.array(np.meshgrid(*values)).T.reshape(-1, len(values))
data = np.vstack(mesh(row) for row in frame[explode].values)
return pd.DataFrame(data=data, columns=explode)
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 2], 'B': [[1, 2], [1, 2]]})
print(unnest(df, ['A', 'B'])) # base
print()
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 2], 'B': [[1, 2], [3, 4]], 'C': [[1, 2], [3, 4]]})
print(unnest(df, ['A', 'B', 'C'])) # multiple columns
print()
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1, 2, 3], 'B': [[1, 2], [1, 2, 3], [1]],
'C': [[1, 2, 3], [1, 2], [1, 2]], 'D': ['A', 'B', 'C']})
print(unnest(df, ['A', 'B'])) # uneven length lists
print()
print(unnest(df, ['D', 'B'])) # different types
print()
Output
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 2 2
A B C
0 1 1 1
1 1 2 1
2 1 1 2
3 1 2 2
4 2 3 3
5 2 4 3
6 2 3 4
7 2 4 4
A B
0 1 1
1 1 2
2 2 1
3 2 2
4 2 3
5 3 1
D B
0 A 1
1 A 2
2 B 1
3 B 2
4 B 3
5 C 1
Answer #5:
Problem Setup
Assume there are multiple columns with different length objects within it
df = pd.DataFrame({
'A': [1, 2],
'B': [[1, 2], [3, 4]],
'C': [[1, 2], [3, 4, 5]]
})
df
A B C
0 1 [1, 2] [1, 2]
1 2 [3, 4] [3, 4, 5]
When the lengths are the same, it is easy for us to assume that the varying elements coincide and should be “zipped” together.
A B C
0 1 [1, 2] [1, 2] # Typical to assume these should be zipped [(1, 1), (2, 2)]
1 2 [3, 4] [3, 4, 5]
However, the assumption gets challenged when we see different length objects, should we “zip”, if so, how do we handle the excess in one of the objects. OR, maybe we want the product of all of the objects. This will get big fast, but might be what is wanted.
A B C
0 1 [1, 2] [1, 2]
1 2 [3, 4] [3, 4, 5] # is this [(3, 3), (4, 4), (None, 5)]?
OR
A B C
0 1 [1, 2] [1, 2]
1 2 [3, 4] [3, 4, 5] # is this [(3, 3), (3, 4), (3, 5), (4, 3), (4, 4), (4, 5)]
The Function
This function gracefully handles zip or product based on a parameter and assumes to zip according to the length of the longest object with zip_longest
from itertools import zip_longest, product
def xplode(df, explode, zipped=True):
method = zip_longest if zipped else product
rest = {*df} - {*explode}
zipped = zip(zip(*map(df.get, rest)), zip(*map(df.get, explode)))
tups = [tup + exploded
for tup, pre in zipped
for exploded in method(*pre)]
return pd.DataFrame(tups, columns=[*rest, *explode])[[*df]]
Zipped
xplode(df, ['B', 'C'])
A B C
0 1 1.0 1
1 1 2.0 2
2 2 3.0 3
3 2 4.0 4
4 2 NaN 5
Product
xplode(df, ['B', 'C'], zipped=False)
A B C
0 1 1 1
1 1 1 2
2 1 2 1
3 1 2 2
4 2 3 3
5 2 3 4
6 2 3 5
7 2 4 3
8 2 4 4
9 2 4 5
New Setup
Varying up the example a bit
df = pd.DataFrame({
'A': [1, 2],
'B': [[1, 2], [3, 4]],
'C': 'C',
'D': [[1, 2], [3, 4, 5]],
'E': [('X', 'Y', 'Z'), ('W',)]
})
df
A B C D E
0 1 [1, 2] C [1, 2] (X, Y, Z)
1 2 [3, 4] C [3, 4, 5] (W,)
Zipped
xplode(df, ['B', 'D', 'E'])
A B C D E
0 1 1.0 C 1.0 X
1 1 2.0 C 2.0 Y
2 1 NaN C NaN Z
3 2 3.0 C 3.0 W
4 2 4.0 C 4.0 None
5 2 NaN C 5.0 None
Product
xplode(df, ['B', 'D', 'E'], zipped=False)
A B C D E
0 1 1 C 1 X
1 1 1 C 1 Y
2 1 1 C 1 Z
3 1 1 C 2 X
4 1 1 C 2 Y
5 1 1 C 2 Z
6 1 2 C 1 X
7 1 2 C 1 Y
8 1 2 C 1 Z
9 1 2 C 2 X
10 1 2 C 2 Y
11 1 2 C 2 Z
12 2 3 C 3 W
13 2 3 C 4 W
14 2 3 C 5 W
15 2 4 C 3 W
16 2 4 C 4 W
17 2 4 C 5 W
Answer #6:
My 5 cents:
df[['B', 'B2']] = pd.DataFrame(df['B'].values.tolist())
df[['A', 'B']].append(df[['A', 'B2']].rename(columns={'B2': 'B'}),
ignore_index=True)
and another 5
df[['B1', 'B2']] = pd.DataFrame([*df['B']]) # if values.tolist() is too boring
(pd.wide_to_long(df.drop('B', 1), 'B', 'A', '')
.reset_index(level=1, drop=True)
.reset_index())
both resulting in the same
A B
0 1 1
1 2 1
2 1 2
3 2 2
Answer #7:
Because normally sublist length are different and join/merge is far more computational expensive. I retested the method for different length sublist and more normal columns.
MultiIndex should be also a easier way to write and has near the same performances as numpy way.
Surprisingly, in my implementation comprehension way has the best performance.
def stack(df):
return df.set_index(['A', 'C']).B.apply(pd.Series).stack()
def comprehension(df):
return pd.DataFrame([x + [z] for x, y in zip(df[['A', 'C']].values.tolist(), df.B) for z in y])
def multiindex(df):
return pd.DataFrame(np.concatenate(df.B.values), index=df.set_index(['A', 'C']).index.repeat(df.B.str.len()))
def array(df):
return pd.DataFrame(
np.column_stack((
np.repeat(df[['A', 'C']].values, df.B.str.len(), axis=0),
np.concatenate(df.B.values)
))
)
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from timeit import timeit
res = pd.DataFrame(
index=[
'stack',
'comprehension',
'multiindex',
'array',
],
columns=[1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, 20000, 50000],
dtype=float
)
for f in res.index:
for c in res.columns:
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': list('abc'), 'C': list('def'), 'B': [['g', 'h', 'i'], ['j', 'k'], ['l']]})
df = pd.concat([df] * c)
stmt = '{}(df)'.format(f)
setp = 'from __main__ import df, {}'.format(f)
res.at[f, c] = timeit(stmt, setp, number=20)
ax = res.div(res.min()).T.plot(loglog=True)
ax.set_xlabel("N")
ax.set_ylabel("time (relative)")
Performance
Answer #8:
I generalized the problem a bit to be applicable to more columns.
Summary of what my solution does:
In[74]: df
Out[74]:
A B C columnD
0 A1 B1 [C1.1, C1.2] D1
1 A2 B2 [C2.1, C2.2] [D2.1, D2.2, D2.3]
2 A3 B3 C3 [D3.1, D3.2]
In[75]: dfListExplode(df,['C','columnD'])
Out[75]:
A B C columnD
0 A1 B1 C1.1 D1
1 A1 B1 C1.2 D1
2 A2 B2 C2.1 D2.1
3 A2 B2 C2.1 D2.2
4 A2 B2 C2.1 D2.3
5 A2 B2 C2.2 D2.1
6 A2 B2 C2.2 D2.2
7 A2 B2 C2.2 D2.3
8 A3 B3 C3 D3.1
9 A3 B3 C3 D3.2
Complete example:
The actual explosion is performed in 3 lines. The rest is cosmetics (multi column explosion, handling of strings instead of lists in the explosion column, …).
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
df=pd.DataFrame( {'A': ['A1','A2','A3'],
'B': ['B1','B2','B3'],
'C': [ ['C1.1','C1.2'],['C2.1','C2.2'],'C3'],
'columnD': [ 'D1',['D2.1','D2.2', 'D2.3'],['D3.1','D3.2']],
})
print('df',df, sep='n')
def dfListExplode(df, explodeKeys):
if not isinstance(explodeKeys, list):
explodeKeys=[explodeKeys]
# recursive handling of explodeKeys
if len(explodeKeys)==0:
return df
elif len(explodeKeys)==1:
explodeKey=explodeKeys[0]
else:
return dfListExplode( dfListExplode(df, explodeKeys[:1]), explodeKeys[1:])
# perform explosion/unnesting for key: explodeKey
dfPrep=df[explodeKey].apply(lambda x: x if isinstance(x,list) else [x]) #casts all elements to a list
dfIndExpl=pd.DataFrame([[x] + [z] for x, y in zip(dfPrep.index,dfPrep.values) for z in y ], columns=['explodedIndex',explodeKey])
dfMerged=dfIndExpl.merge(df.drop(explodeKey, axis=1), left_on='explodedIndex', right_index=True)
dfReind=dfMerged.reindex(columns=list(df))
return dfReind
dfExpl=dfListExplode(df,['C','columnD'])
print('dfExpl',dfExpl, sep='n')
Credits to WeNYoBen’s answer
