NumPy or Pandas: Keeping array type as integer while having a NaN value

Question

Is there a preferred way to keep the data type of a numpy array fixed as int (or int64 or whatever), while still having an element ins

Answer 1

If there are blanks in the text data, columns that would normally be integers will be cast to floats as float64 dtype because int64 dtype cannot handle nulls. This can cause inconsistent schema if you are loading multiple files some with blanks (which will end up as float64 and others without which will end up as int64

This code will attempt to convert any number type columns to Int64 (as opposed to int64) since Int64 can handle nulls

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

#show datatypes before transformation
mydf.dtypes

for c in mydf.select_dtypes(np.number).columns:
    try:
        mydf[c] = mydf[c].astype('Int64')
        print('casted {} as Int64'.format(c))
    except:
        print('could not cast {} to Int64'.format(c))

#show datatypes after transformation
mydf.dtypes