Splitting multiple columns into rows in pandas dataframe

Question

I have a pandas dataframe as follows:

ticker    account      value         date
aa       assets       100,200       20121231, 20131231
bb       liabilities           


        

Answer 1

I wrote explode function based on previous answers. It might be useful for anyone who want to grab and use it quickly.

def explode(df, cols, split_on=','):
    """
    Explode dataframe on the given column, split on given delimeter
    """
    cols_sep = list(set(df.columns) - set(cols))
    df_cols = df[cols_sep]
    explode_len = df[cols[0]].str.split(split_on).map(len)
    repeat_list = []
    for r, e in zip(df_cols.as_matrix(), explode_len):
        repeat_list.extend([list(r)]*e)
    df_repeat = pd.DataFrame(repeat_list, columns=cols_sep)
    df_explode = pd.concat([df[col].str.split(split_on, expand=True).stack().str.strip().reset_index(drop=True)
                            for col in cols], axis=1)
    df_explode.columns = cols
    return pd.concat((df_repeat, df_explode), axis=1)

example given from @piRSquared:

df = pd.DataFrame([['aa', 'assets', '100,200', '20121231,20131231'],
                   ['bb', 'liabilities', '50,50', '20141231,20131231']],
                  columns=['ticker', 'account', 'value', 'date'])
explode(df, ['value', 'date'])

output

+-----------+------+-----+--------+
|    account|ticker|value|    date|
+-----------+------+-----+--------+
|     assets|    aa|  100|20121231|
|     assets|    aa|  200|20131231|
|liabilities|    bb|   50|20141231|
|liabilities|    bb|   50|20131231|
+-----------+------+-----+--------+