Convert Python dict into a dataframe

Question

I have a Python dictionary like the following:

{u\'2012-06-08\': 388,
 u\'2012-06-09\': 388,
 u\'2012-06-10\': 388,
 u\'2012-06-11\': 389,
 u\'2012-06-12\':          


        

Answer 1

The error here, is since calling the DataFrame constructor with scalar values (where it expects values to be a list/dict/... i.e. have multiple columns):

pd.DataFrame(d)
ValueError: If using all scalar values, you must must pass an index

You could take the items from the dictionary (i.e. the key-value pairs):

In [11]: pd.DataFrame(d.items())  # or list(d.items()) in python 3
Out[11]:
             0    1
0   2012-07-02  392
1   2012-07-06  392
2   2012-06-29  391
3   2012-06-28  391
...

In [12]: pd.DataFrame(d.items(), columns=['Date', 'DateValue'])
Out[12]:
          Date  DateValue
0   2012-07-02        392
1   2012-07-06        392
2   2012-06-29        391

But I think it makes more sense to pass the Series constructor:

In [21]: s = pd.Series(d, name='DateValue')
Out[21]:
2012-06-08    388
2012-06-09    388
2012-06-10    388

In [22]: s.index.name = 'Date'

In [23]: s.reset_index()
Out[23]:
          Date  DateValue
0   2012-06-08        388
1   2012-06-09        388
2   2012-06-10        388