join or merge with overwrite in pandas

Question

I want to perform a join/merge/append operation on a dataframe with datetime index.

Let\'s say I have df1 and I want to add df2 to it.

Answer 1

How about: df2.combine_first(df1)?

In [33]: df2
Out[33]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-03  0.638998  1.277361  0.193649  0.345063
2000-01-04 -0.816756 -1.711666 -1.155077 -0.678726
2000-01-05  0.435507 -0.025162 -1.112890  0.324111
2000-01-06 -0.210756 -1.027164  0.036664  0.884715
2000-01-07 -0.821631 -0.700394 -0.706505  1.193341
2000-01-10  1.015447 -0.909930  0.027548  0.258471
2000-01-11 -0.497239 -0.979071 -0.461560  0.447598

In [34]: df1
Out[34]: 
                   A         B         C
2000-01-03  2.288863  0.188175 -0.040928
2000-01-04  0.159107 -0.666861 -0.551628
2000-01-05 -0.356838 -0.231036 -1.211446
2000-01-06 -0.866475  1.113018 -0.001483
2000-01-07  0.303269  0.021034  0.471715
2000-01-10  1.149815  0.686696 -1.230991
2000-01-11 -1.296118 -0.172950 -0.603887
2000-01-12 -1.034574 -0.523238  0.626968
2000-01-13 -0.193280  1.857499 -0.046383
2000-01-14 -1.043492 -0.820525  0.868685

In [35]: df2.comb
df2.combine        df2.combineAdd     df2.combine_first  df2.combineMult    

In [35]: df2.combine_first(df1)
Out[35]: 
                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-03  0.638998  1.277361  0.193649  0.345063
2000-01-04 -0.816756 -1.711666 -1.155077 -0.678726
2000-01-05  0.435507 -0.025162 -1.112890  0.324111
2000-01-06 -0.210756 -1.027164  0.036664  0.884715
2000-01-07 -0.821631 -0.700394 -0.706505  1.193341
2000-01-10  1.015447 -0.909930  0.027548  0.258471
2000-01-11 -0.497239 -0.979071 -0.461560  0.447598
2000-01-12 -1.034574 -0.523238  0.626968       NaN
2000-01-13 -0.193280  1.857499 -0.046383       NaN
2000-01-14 -1.043492 -0.820525  0.868685       NaN

Note that it takes the values from df1 for indices that do not overlap with df2. If this doesn't do exactly what you want I would be willing to improve this function / add options to it.