Efficient way to unnest (explode) multiple list columns in a pandas DataFrame

Question

I am reading multiple JSON objects into one DataFrame. The problem is that some of the columns are lists. Also, the data is very big and because of that I cannot use the ava

Answer 1

def explode(df, lst_cols, fill_value=''):
    # make sure `lst_cols` is a list
    if lst_cols and not isinstance(lst_cols, list):
        lst_cols = [lst_cols]
    # all columns except `lst_cols`
    idx_cols = df.columns.difference(lst_cols)

    # calculate lengths of lists
    lens = df[lst_cols[0]].str.len()

    if (lens > 0).all():
        # ALL lists in cells aren't empty
        return pd.DataFrame({
            col:np.repeat(df[col].values, df[lst_cols[0]].str.len())
            for col in idx_cols
        }).assign(**{col:np.concatenate(df[col].values) for col in lst_cols}) \
          .loc[:, df.columns]
    else:
        # at least one list in cells is empty
        return pd.DataFrame({
            col:np.repeat(df[col].values, df[lst_cols[0]].str.len())
            for col in idx_cols
        }).assign(**{col:np.concatenate(df[col].values) for col in lst_cols}) \
          .append(df.loc[lens==0, idx_cols]).fillna(fill_value) \
          .loc[:, df.columns]

Usage:

In [82]: explode(df, lst_cols=list('BCDE'))
Out[82]:
    A   B   C   D   E
0  x1  v1  c1  d1  e1
1  x1  v2  c2  d2  e2
2  x2  v3  c3  d3  e3
3  x2  v4  c4  d4  e4
4  x3  v5  c5  d5  e5
5  x3  v6  c6  d6  e6
6  x4  v7  c7  d7  e7
7  x4  v8  c8  d8  e8