Python pandas insert list into a cell

Question

Since set_value has been deprecated since version 0.21.0, you should now use at. It can insert a list into a cell without raising a ValueError as loc does. I think this is because at always refers to a single value, while loc can refer to values as well as rows and columns.

df = pd.DataFrame(data={'A': [1, 2, 3], 'B': ['x', 'y', 'z']})

df.at[1, 'B'] = ['m', 'n']

df =
    A   B
0   1   x
1   2   [m, n]
2   3   z

You also need to make sure the column you are inserting into has dtype=object. For example

>>> df = pd.DataFrame(data={'A': [1, 2, 3], 'B': [1,2,3]})
>>> df.dtypes
A    int64
B    int64
dtype: object

>>> df.at[1, 'B'] = [1, 2, 3]
ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence

>>> df['B'] = df['B'].astype('object')
>>> df.at[1, 'B'] = [1, 2, 3]
>>> df
   A          B
0  1          1
1  2  [1, 2, 3]
2  3          3

Pandas >= 0.21

set_value has been deprecated. You can now use DataFrame.at to set by label, and DataFrame.iat to set by integer position.

Setting Cell Values with at/iat

# Setup
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [12, 23], 'B': [['a', 'b'], ['c', 'd']]})
df

    A       B
0  12  [a, b]
1  23  [c, d]

df.dtypes

A     int64
B    object
dtype: object

If you want to set a value in second row of the "B" to some new list, use DataFrane.at:

df.at[1, 'B'] = ['m', 'n']
df

    A       B
0  12  [a, b]
1  23  [m, n]

You can also set by integer position using DataFrame.iat

df.iat[1, df.columns.get_loc('B')] = ['m', 'n']
df

    A       B
0  12  [a, b]
1  23  [m, n]

---

What if I get ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence?

I'll try to reproduce this with:

df

    A   B
0  12 NaN
1  23 NaN

df.dtypes

A      int64
B    float64
dtype: object

df.at[1, 'B'] = ['m', 'n']
# ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence.

This is because of a your object is of float64 dtype, whereas lists are objects, so there's a mismatch there. What you would have to do in this situation is to convert the column to object first.

df['B'] = df['B'].astype(object)
df.dtypes

A     int64
B    object
dtype: object

Then, it works:

df.at[1, 'B'] = ['m', 'n']
df

    A       B
0  12     NaN
1  23  [m, n]

---

Possible, But Hacky

Even more wacky, I've found you can hack through DataFrame.loc to achieve something similar if you pass nested lists.

df.loc[1, 'B'] = [['m'], ['n'], ['o'], ['p']]
df

    A             B
0  12        [a, b]
1  23  [m, n, o, p]

You can read more about why this works here.

df3.set_value(1, 'B', abc) works for any dataframe. Take care of the data type of column 'B'. Eg. a list can not be inserted into a float column, at that case df['B'] = df['B'].astype(object) can help.

Quick work around

Simply enclose the list within a new list, as done for col2 in the data frame below. The reason it works is that python takes the outer list (of lists) and converts it into a column as if it were containing normal scalar items, which is lists in our case and not normal scalars.

mydict={'col1':[1,2,3],'col2':[[1, 4], [2, 5], [3, 6]]}
data=pd.DataFrame(mydict)
data


   col1     col2
0   1       [1, 4]
1   2       [2, 5]
2   3       [3, 6]

Also getting

ValueError: Must have equal len keys and value when setting with an iterable,

using .at rather than .loc did not make any difference in my case, but enforcing the datatype of the dataframe column did the trick:

df['B'] = df['B'].astype(object)

Then I could set lists, numpy array and all sorts of things as single cell values in my dataframes.