Problems with combining columns from dataframes in pandas

Question

I have two dataframes that I'm trying to merge.

               df1
    code  scale   R1    R2...
0   121     1     80    110
1   121     2     NaN   NaN
2   121     3     NaN   NaN
3   313     1     60    60
4   313     2     NaN   NaN
5   313     3     NaN   NaN
...
             df2
    code  scale   R1    R2...
0   121     2     30    20
3   313     2     15    10
...

I need, based on the equality of the columns code and scale copy the value from df2 to df1.

The result should look like this:

               df1
    code  scale   R1    R2...
0   121     1     80    110
1   121     2     30    20
2   121     3     NaN   NaN
3   313     1     60    60
4   313     2     15    10
5   313     3     NaN   NaN
...

The problem is that there can be a lot of columns like R1 and R2 and I can not check each one separately, so I wanted to use something from this instruction, but nothing gives me the desired result. I'm doing something wrong, but I can't understand what. I really need advice.

Answer 1

What do you want to happen if the two dataframes both have values for R1/R2? If you want keep df1, you could do

df1.set_index(['code', 'scale']).fillna(df2.set_index(['code', 'scale'])).reset_index()

To keep df2 just do the fillna the other way round. To combine in some other way please clarify the question!

Answer 2

Try this ?

pd.concat([df,df1],axis=0).sort_values(['code','scale']).drop_duplicates(['code','scale'],keep='last')    
Out[21]: 
    code  scale    R1     R2
0   121      1  80.0  110.0
0   121      2  30.0   20.0
2   121      3   NaN    NaN
3   313      1  60.0   60.0
3   313      2  15.0   10.0
5   313      3   NaN    NaN