Pandas explode list of dictionaries into rows

Question

Have this:

                                  items, name
0   { [{'a': 2, 'b': 1}, {'a': 4, 'b': 3}], this }
1   { [{'a': 2, 'b': 1}, {'a': 4, 'b': 3}], that }

But would like to have the list of dictionary objects exploded into (flattened?) into actual rows like this:

    a, b, name
0   { 2, 1, this}
1   { 4, 3, this}
0   { 2, 1, that}
1   { 4, 3, that}

Having been trying to use melt but with no luck, any ideas? suggestions?

Data to produce DataFrame:

data = {'items': [[{'a': 2, 'b': 1}, {'a': 4, 'b': 3}], [{'a': 2, 'b': 1}, {'a': 4, 'b': 3}]], 'name': ['this', 'that']}

Answer 1

Another way to use concat perhaps more cleanly:

In [11]: pd.concat(df.group.apply(pd.DataFrame).tolist(), keys=df["name"])
Out[11]:
        a  b
name
this 0  2  1
     1  4  3
that 0  2  1
     1  4  3

In [12]: pd.concat(df.group.apply(pd.DataFrame).tolist(), 
                        keys=df["name"]).reset_index(level="name")
Out[12]:
   name  a  b
0  this  2  1
1  this  4  3
0  that  2  1
1  that  4  3

Answer 2

ab = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(np.concatenate(df['items']).tolist())
lens = df['items'].str.len()
rest = df.drop('items', 1).iloc[df.index.repeat(lens)].reset_index(drop=True)
ab.join(rest)

   a  b  name
0  2  1  this
1  4  3  this
2  2  1  that
3  4  3  that

Answer 3

pd.concat([pd.DataFrame(df1.iloc[0]) for x,df1 in df.groupby('name').group],keys=df.name)\
     .reset_index().drop('level_1',1)
Out[63]: 
   name  a  b
0  this  2  1
1  this  4  3
2  that  2  1
3  that  4  3

Data Input

df = pd.DataFrame({ "group":[[{'a': 2, 'b': 1}, {'a': 4, 'b': 3}],[{'a': 2, 'b': 1}, {'a': 4, 'b': 3}]],
                   "name": ['this', 'that']})