Pandas: how do you map a dictionary of dictionaries to 2 columns?

Question

I have the following dictionary:

rates = {'USD': 
              {'2019': 1,
               '2020': 2,
               '2021': 3},
         'CAD':
              {'2019': 4,
               '2020': 5,
               '2021': 6}
         }

and I have the following dummy dataframe:

   Item Currency Year Rate
0  1    USD      2019 
1  2    USD      2020
2  3    CAD      2021
3  4    CAD      2019
4  5    GBP      2020

I now want to populate the column Rate by mapping the correct rate, where rate = f(currency,year). I am trying with:

def map_rate(data, rates):

    for index, row in data.iterrows():

        currency = str(row['Currency'])

        if currency in list(rates.keys()):

            year = str(row['Year'])
            rate = rates[currency][year]

        else:
            rate = 1

    return rate

I use the above like the following:

df['Rate'] = map_rate(test, rates)

However, this is only returning the first rate, e.g. the value 1, instead of the appropriate rates:

    Item Currency Year  Rate
0   1    USD      2019  1
1   2    USD      2020  1
2   3    CAD      2021  1
3   4    CAD      2019  1
4   5    GBP      2020  1

The expected result is:

    Item Currency Year  Rate
0   1    USD      2019  1
1   2    USD      2020  2
2   3    CAD      2021  6
3   4    CAD      2019  4
4   5    GBP      2020  1

Where is my mistake?

Answer 1

Using .apply

Ex:

df['Rate'] = df.apply(lambda x: rates[x['Currency']][x['Year']], axis=1)
# OR
df['Rate'] = df.apply(lambda x: rates.get(x['Currency'], dict()).get(x['Year'], 1), axis=1)
print(df)

Output:

  Item Currency  Year  Rate
0    1      USD  2019     1
1    2      USD  2020     2
2    3      CAD  2021     6
3    4      CAD  2019     4
4    5      GBP  2020     1

Answer 2

Here is one way, create a multiindex series from rates with stack, that you can reindex with the values from df to get the wanted rate per row.

df['rate'] = (
    pd.DataFrame(rates)
      .stack()
      .reindex(pd.MultiIndex.from_frame(df[['Year','Currency']].astype(str)), 
               fill_value=1)
     .to_numpy()
)
print(df)
   Item Currency  Year  rate
0     1      USD  2019     1
1     2      USD  2020     2
2     3      CAD  2021     6
3     4      CAD  2019     4
4     5      GBP  2020     1