Convert Pandas DataFrame Column to List
-
Use the
tolist()Method to Convert a Dataframe Column to a List -
Use the
list()Function to Convert a Dataframe Column to a List
This tutorial article will introduce different methods to convert a Pandas DataFrame column to a list, like using the tolist() method in Pandas.
Use the tolist() Method to Convert a Dataframe Column to a List
A column in the Pandas dataframe is a Pandas Series. So if we need to convert a column to a list, we can use the tolist() method in the Series. tolist() converts the Series of pandas data-frame to a list.
In the code below, df['DOB'] returns the Series, or the column, with the name as DOB from the DataFrame.
The tolist() method converts the Series to a list.
import pandas as pd
df=pd.DataFrame([
['James', '1/1/2014', '1000'],
['Michelina', '2/1/2014', '12000'],
['Marc', '3/1/2014', '36000'],
['Bob', '4/1/2014', '15000'],
['Halena', '4/1/2014', '12000']
], columns=['Name', 'DOB','Salary'])
print("Pandas DataFrame:\n\n",df,"\n")
list_of_single_column = df['DOB'].tolist()
print("the list of a single column from the dataframe\n",
list_of_single_column,
"\n",
type(list_of_single_column))
Output:
Pandas DataFrame:
Name DOB Salary
0 James 1/1/2014 1000
1 Michelina 2/1/2014 12000
2 Marc 3/1/2014 36000
3 Bob 4/1/2014 15000
4 Halena 4/1/2014 12000
the list of a single column from the dataframe
['1/1/2014', '2/1/2014', '3/1/2014', '4/1/2014', '4/1/2014']
<class 'list'>
Use the list() Function to Convert a Dataframe Column to a List
We can also use the list() function to convert a DataFrame column to a list, by passing the DataFrame to the list() function.
We will use the same data as above to demonstrate this approach.
import pandas as pd
df=pd.DataFrame([
['James', '1/1/2014', '1000'],
['Michelina', '2/1/2014', '12000'],
['Marc', '3/1/2014', '36000'],
['Bob', '4/1/2014', '15000'],
['Halena', '4/1/2014', '12000']
], columns=['Name', 'DOB','Salary'])
print("Pandas DataFrame:\n\n",df,"\n")
list_of_single_column = list(df['DOB'])
print("the list of a single column from the dataframe\n",
list_of_single_column,
"\n",
type(list_of_single_column))
Output:
Pandas DataFrame:
Name DOB Salary
0 James 1/1/2014 1000
1 Michelina 2/1/2014 12000
2 Marc 3/1/2014 36000
3 Bob 4/1/2014 15000
4 Halena 4/1/2014 12000
the list of a single column from the dataframe
['1/1/2014', '2/1/2014', '3/1/2014', '4/1/2014', '4/1/2014']
<class 'list'>
