Retrieve pandas dataframe column index

Question

Say I have a pandas dataframe. I can access the columns either by their name or by their index.

Is there a simple way in which I can retrieve the column index given its name?

Your question is unclear as we have 3 answers here, are you asking how to get just the columns: list(df) or df.columns or asking how to get the column array index position by name? — EdChum
– EdChum, Commented Jun 9, 2016 at 10:42

EdChum · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-09 10:36:59Z

1

Use get_loc on the columns Index object to return the ordinal index value:

In [283]:
df = pd.DataFrame(columns=list('abcd'))
df

Out[283]:
Empty DataFrame
Columns: [a, b, c, d]
Index: []

In [288]:
df.columns.get_loc('b')

Out[288]:
1

answered Jun 9, 2016 at 10:36

EdChum

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Comments

Ricardo Silveira · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-09 12:47:23Z

1

What do you mean by index exactly?

I bet you are referring to index as a list index, right?

Because Pandas has another kind of index too.

From my first understandying, you can do the following:

my_df = pd.DataFrame(columns=['A', 'B', 'C'])
my_columns = my_df.columns.tolist()
print my_columns # yields ['A', 'B', 'C'], therefore you can recover the index by just doing the following
my_columns.index('C') #yields 2

edited Jun 9, 2016 at 12:47

answered Jun 9, 2016 at 10:38

Ricardo Silveira

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2 Comments

apocalypsis Over a year ago

This returned AttributeError: 'Index' object has no attribute 'index'

Ricardo Silveira Over a year ago

sorry, check it again. I converted it to a list now. i am on my mobile, so i may commit some mistakes =P

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