How can I left justify text in a pandas DataFrame column in an IPython notebook

Question

I am trying to format the output in an IPython notebook. I tried using the to_string function, and this neatly lets me eliminate the index column. But the textual data is ri

Answer 1

This works on Python 3.7 (functools is a part of that release now)

# pylint: disable=C0103,C0200,R0205
from __future__ import print_function
import pandas as pd
import functools

@staticmethod
def displayDataFrame(dataframe, displayNumRows=True, displayIndex=True, leftJustify=True):
    # type: (pd.DataFrame, bool, bool, bool) -> None
    """
    :param dataframe: pandas DataFrame
    :param displayNumRows: If True, show the number or rows in the output.
    :param displayIndex: If True, then show the indexes
    :param leftJustify: If True, then use technique to format columns left justified.
    :return: None
    """

    if leftJustify:
        formatters = {}

        for columnName in list(dataframe.columns):
            columnType = type(columnName)  # The magic!!
            # print("{} =>  {}".format(columnName, columnType))
            if columnType == type(bool):
                form = "{{!s:<8}}".format()
            elif columnType == type(float):
                form = "{{!s:<5}}".format()
            else:
                max = dataframe[columnName].str.len().max()
                form = "{{:<{}s}}".format(max)

            formatters[columnName] = functools.partial(str.format, form)

        print(dataframe.to_string(index=displayIndex, formatters=formatters), end="\n\n")
    else:
        print(dataframe.to_string(index=displayIndex), end="\n\n")

    if displayNumRows:
        print("Num Rows: {}".format(len(dataframe)), end="\n\n")