parsing a dictionary in a pandas dataframe cell into new row cells (new columns)

Question

I have a Pandas Dataframe that contains one column containing cells containing a dictionary of key:value pairs, like this:

{\"name\":\"Test Thorton\",\"compa         


        

Answer 1

consider df

df = pd.DataFrame([
        ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', dict(F='y', G='v')],
        ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', dict(F='y', G='v')],
    ], columns=list('ABCDE'))

df

   A  B  C  D                     E
0  a  b  c  d  {'F': 'y', 'G': 'v'}
1  a  b  c  d  {'F': 'y', 'G': 'v'}

---

Option 1
Use pd.Series.apply, assign new columns in place

df.E.apply(pd.Series)

   F  G
0  y  v
1  y  v

Assign it like this

df[['F', 'G']] = df.E.apply(pd.Series)
df.drop('E', axis=1)

   A  B  C  D  F  G
0  a  b  c  d  y  v
1  a  b  c  d  y  v

---

Option 2
Pipeline the whole thing using the pd.DataFrame.assign method

df.drop('E', 1).assign(**pd.DataFrame(df.E.values.tolist()))

   A  B  C  D  F  G
0  a  b  c  d  y  v
1  a  b  c  d  y  v