How to Read CSV Only Specific Columns Into Pandas DataFrame

1. Use the read_csv() Function and Pass a List of Column Names to Be Read
2. Use the read_csv() Function and Pass List of Column Numbers to Be Read

This tutorial will discuss different methods to read specific columns from a csv file using Pandas. We’ll use the following CSV file for the demo.

Use the read_csv() Function and Pass a List of Column Names to Be Read

The Pandas library provides read_csv() function. The read_csv() is used to read a comma-separated values (csv) file into DataFrame.

The read_csv() takes the file path of the csv file, and it has more than 40 optional parameters. For this tutorial, let’s concentrate usecols parameter.

Syntax - pd.read_csv():

pd.read_csv(filepath, usecols)

Parameters

• filepath - The path or location of the csv file to be loaded.
• usecols - List of specific columns to be read.

Returns

• DataFrame

Follow the steps below to use the read_csv() function and pass the list of column names to be read.

The following code is the implementation of the above approach.

# import the pandas
import pandas as pd

# Reading the specific columns from csv
df = pd.read_csv("data.csv", usecols=["Course", "price$"])

# printing the dataframe
print(df)

Output:

       Course  price$
0      Python     199
1       Spark     299
2        Java      99
3  JavaScript     250
4          C#     399

Use the read_csv() Function and Pass List of Column Numbers to Be Read

We can also use the column numbers to read_csv() to read-only specific columns.

The following code is the implementation of the above approach.

# import the pandas
import pandas as pd

# Reading the specific columns from csv
df = pd.read_csv("data.csv", usecols=[2, 3])

# printing the dataframe
print(df)

Output:

     Mentor  price$
0     Robert     199
1  Elizibeth     299
2      Nolan      99
3      Chris     250
4    johnson     399