Error converting object (string) to Int32: TypeError: object cannot be converted to an IntegerDtype

Question

I get following error while trying to convert object (string) column in Pandas to Int32 which is integer type that allows for NA values.

df.column = df.column.astype('Int32')

TypeError: object cannot be converted to an IntegerDtype

I'm using pandas version: 0.25.3

Answer 1

As of v0.24, you can use: df['col'] = df['col'].astype(pd.Int32Dtype())

Edit: I should have mentioned that this falls under the Nullable integer documentation. The docs specify other nullable integer types as well (i.e. Int64Dtype, Int8Dtype, UInt64Dtype, etc.)

Answer 2

It's known bug, as explained here.

Workaround is to convert column first to float and than to Int32.

Make sure you strip your column from whitespaces before you do conversion:

df.column = df.column.str.strip()

Than do conversion:

df.column = df.column.astype('float')  # first convert to float before int
df.column = df.column.astype('Int32')

or simpler:

 df.column = df.column.astype('float').astype('Int32') # or Int64