Converting a column within pandas dataframe from int to string

Question

I have a dataframe in pandas with mixed int and str data columns. I want to concatenate first the columns within the dataframe. To do that I have to convert an int

Answer 1

Warning: Both solutions given ( astype() and apply() ) do not preserve NULL values in either the nan or the None form.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame([None,'string',np.nan,42], index=[0,1,2,3], columns=['A'])

df1 = df['A'].astype(str)
df2 =  df['A'].apply(str)

print df.isnull()
print df1.isnull()
print df2.isnull()

I believe this is fixed by the implementation of to_string()