How to explode a list inside a Dataframe cell into separate rows

Question

I\'m looking to turn a pandas cell containing a list into rows for each of those values.

So, take this:

If I\'d like to unpack and stack the value

Answer 1

Similar to Hive's EXPLODE functionality:

import copy

def pandas_explode(df, column_to_explode):
    """
    Similar to Hive's EXPLODE function, take a column with iterable elements, and flatten the iterable to one element 
    per observation in the output table

    :param df: A dataframe to explod
    :type df: pandas.DataFrame
    :param column_to_explode: 
    :type column_to_explode: str
    :return: An exploded data frame
    :rtype: pandas.DataFrame
    """

    # Create a list of new observations
    new_observations = list()

    # Iterate through existing observations
    for row in df.to_dict(orient='records'):

        # Take out the exploding iterable
        explode_values = row[column_to_explode]
        del row[column_to_explode]

        # Create a new observation for every entry in the exploding iterable & add all of the other columns
        for explode_value in explode_values:

            # Deep copy existing observation
            new_observation = copy.deepcopy(row)

            # Add one (newly flattened) value from exploding iterable
            new_observation[column_to_explode] = explode_value

            # Add to the list of new observations
            new_observations.append(new_observation)

    # Create a DataFrame
    return_df = pandas.DataFrame(new_observations)

    # Return
    return return_df