Is there a way to copy only the structure (not the data) of a Pandas DataFrame?

Question

I received a DataFrame from somewhere and want to create another DataFrame with the same number and names of columns and rows (indexes). For example, suppose that the origin

Answer 1

I know this is an old question, but I thought I would add my two cents.

def df_cols_like(df):
    """
    Returns an empty data frame with the same column names and types as df
    """
    df2 = pd.DataFrame({i[0]: pd.Series(dtype=i[1])
                        for i in df.dtypes.iteritems()},
                       columns=df.dtypes.index)
    return df2

This approach centers around the df.dtypes attribute of the input data frame, df, which is a pd.Series. A pd.DataFrame is constructed from a dictionary of empty pd.Series objects named using the input column names with the column order being taken from the input df.