I've got a solution that's pretty simple to implement.
Make a temporary class just to wrap the list object and later call the value from the class.
Here's a practical example:
df = pd.DataFrame([
{'a': 1},
{'a': 2},
{'a': 3},
])
df.loc[:, 'b'] = [
[1,2,4,2,],
[1,2,],
[4,5,6]
] # This works. Because the list has the same length as the rows of the dataframe
df.loc[:, 'c'] = [1,2,4,5,3] # This does not work.
>>> ValueError: Must have equal len keys and value when setting with an iterable
## To force pandas to have list as value in each cell, wrap the list with a temporary class.
class Fake(object):
def __init__(self, li_obj):
self.obj = li_obj
df.loc[:, 'c'] = Fake([1,2,5,3,5,7,]) # This works.
df.c = df.c.apply(lambda x: x.obj) # Now extract the value from the class. This works.
Creating a fake class to do this might look like a hassle but it can have some practical applications. For an example you can use this with apply when the return value is list.
Pandas would normally refuse to insert list into a cell but if you use this method, you can force the insert.