How to find a columns set for a primary key candidate in CSV file?

Question

I have a CSV file (not normalized, example, real file up to 100 columns):

   ID, CUST_NAME, CLIENT_NAME, PAYMENT_NUM, START_DATE, END_DATE
    1,     CUST1,         


        

Answer 1

pandas and itertools will give you what you're looking for.

import pandas
from itertools import chain, combinations

def key_options(items):
    return chain.from_iterable(combinations(items, r) for r in range(1, len(items)+1) )

df = pandas.read_csv('test.csv');

# iterate over all combos of headings, excluding ID for brevity
for candidate in key_options(list(df)[1:]):
    deduped = df.drop_duplicates(candidate)

    if len(deduped.index) == len(df.index):
        print ','.join(candidate)

This gives you the output:

PAYMENT_NUM, END_DATE
CUST_NAME, CLIENT_NAME, END_DATE
CUST_NAME, PAYMENT_NUM, END_DATE
CLIENT_NAME, PAYMENT_NUM, END_DATE
PAYMENT_NUM, START_DATE, END_DATE
CUST_NAME, CLIENT_NAME, PAYMENT_NUM, END_DATE
CUST_NAME, CLIENT_NAME, START_DATE, END_DATE
CUST_NAME, PAYMENT_NUM, START_DATE, END_DATE
CLIENT_NAME, PAYMENT_NUM, START_DATE, END_DATE
CUST_NAME, CLIENT_NAME, PAYMENT_NUM, START_DATE, END_DATE

Answer 2

This is one way via itertools.combinations. It works by, for each set of columns, dropping duplicates and checking if the size of the dataframe changes.

This results in 44 distinct combinations of columns.

from itertools import combinations, chain

full_list = chain.from_iterable(combinations(df, i) for i in range(1, len(df.columns)+1))

n = len(df.index)

res = []
for cols in full_list:
    cols = list(cols)
    if len(df[cols].drop_duplicates().index) == n:
        res.append(cols)

print(len(res))  # 44