[python] How to print a groupby object

I want to print the result of grouping with Pandas.

I have a dataframe:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': ['one', 'one', 'two', 'three', 'three', 'one'], 'B': range(6)})
print(df)

       A  B
0    one  0
1    one  1
2    two  2
3  three  3
4  three  4
5    one  5

When printing after grouping by 'A' I have the following:

print(df.groupby('A'))

<pandas.core.groupby.DataFrameGroupBy object at 0x05416E90>

How can I print the dataframe grouped?

If I do:

print(df.groupby('A').head())

I obtain the dataframe as if it was not grouped:

             A  B
A                
one   0    one  0
      1    one  1
two   2    two  2
three 3  three  3
      4  three  4
one   5    one  5

I was expecting something like:

             A  B
A                
one   0    one  0
      1    one  1
      5    one  5
two   2    two  2
three 3  three  3
      4  three  4

This question is related to python pandas

The answer is


to print all (or arbitrarily many) lines of the grouped df:

import pandas as pd
pd.set_option('display.max_rows', 500)

grouped_df = df.group(['var1', 'var2'])
print(grouped_df)

Another simple alternative:

for name_of_the_group, group in grouped_dataframe:
   print (name_of_the_group)
   print (group)

In python 3

k = None
for name_of_the_group, group in dict(df_group):
    if(k != name_of_the_group):
        print ('\n', name_of_the_group)
        print('..........','\n')
    print (group)
    k = name_of_the_group

In more interactive way


In Jupyter Notebook, if you do the following, it prints a nice grouped version of the object. The apply method helps in creation of a multiindex dataframe.

by = 'A'  # groupby 'by' argument
df.groupby(by).apply(lambda a: a[:])

Output:

             A  B
A                
one   0    one  0
      1    one  1
      5    one  5
three 3  three  3
      4  three  4
two   2    two  2

If you want the by column(s) to not appear in the output, just drop the column(s), like so.

df.groupby(by).apply(lambda a: a.drop(by, axis=1)[:])

Output:

         B
A         
one   0  0
      1  1
      5  5
three 3  3
      4  4
two   2  2

Here, I am not sure as to why .iloc[:] does not work instead of [:] at the end. So, if there are some issues in future due to updates (or at present), .iloc[:len(a)] also works.


Also, other simple alternative could be:

gb = df.groupby("A")
gb.count() # or,
gb.get_group(your_key)

If you're simply looking for a way to display it, you could use describe():

grp = df.groupby['colName']
grp.describe()

This gives you a neat table.


Call list() on the GroupBy object

print(list(df.groupby('A')))

gives you:

[('one',      A  B
0  one  0
1  one  1
5  one  5), ('three',        A  B
3  three  3
4  three  4), ('two',      A  B
2  two  2)]

Simply do:

grouped_df = df.groupby('A')

for key, item in grouped_df:
    print(grouped_df.get_group(key), "\n\n")

This also works,

grouped_df = df.groupby('A')    
gb = grouped_df.groups

for key, values in gb.iteritems():
    print(df.ix[values], "\n\n")

For selective key grouping: Insert the keys you want inside the key_list_from_gb, in following, using gb.keys(): For Example,

gb = grouped_df.groups
gb.keys()

key_list_from_gb = [key1, key2, key3]

for key, values in gb.items():
    if key in key_list_from_gb:
        print(df.ix[values], "\n")

df.groupby('key you want to group by').apply(print)

As mentioned by an other member, this is the easiest and simplest solution to visualize a groupby object.


df.groupby('A').apply(display)

gives neat formatting


I found a tricky way, just for brainstorm, see the code:

df['a'] = df['A']  # create a shadow column for MultiIndexing
df.sort_values('A', inplace=True)
df.set_index(["A","a"], inplace=True)
print(df)

the output:

             B
A     a
one   one    0
      one    1
      one    5
three three  3
      three  4
two   two    2

The pros is so easy to print, as it returns a dataframe, instead of Groupby Object. And the output looks nice. While the con is that it create a series of redundant data.


you cannot see the groupBy data directly by print statement but you can see by iterating over the group using for loop try this code to see the group by data

group = df.groupby('A') #group variable contains groupby data
for A,A_df in group: # A is your column and A_df is group of one kind at a time
  print(A)
  print(A_df)

you will get an output after trying this as a groupby result

I hope it helps


This is a better general purpose answer. This function will print all group names and values, or optionally selects one or more groups for display.

def print_pd_groupby(X, grp=None):
    '''Display contents of a Panda groupby object
    :param X: Pandas groupby object
    :param grp: a list with one or more group names
    '''
    if grp is None:
        for k,i in X:
            print("group:", k)
            print(i)
    else:
        for j in grp:
            print("group:", j)
            print(X.get_group(j))

In your example case, here's session output

In [116]: df = pd.DataFrame({'A': ['one', 'one', 'two', 'three', 'three', 'one'], 'B': range(6)})

In [117]: dfg = df.groupby('A')

In [118]: print_pd_groupby(dfg)
group: one
     A  B
0  one  0
1  one  1
5  one  5
group: three
       A  B
3  three  3
4  three  4
group: two
     A  B
2  two  2

In [119]: print_pd_groupby(dfg, grp = ["one", "two"])
group: one
     A  B
0  one  0
1  one  1
5  one  5
group: two
     A  B
2  two  2

This is a better answer because a function is re-usable content, put it in your package or function collection and never re-write that "scriptish" approach again.

IMHO, something like this should be a built in method in Pandas groupby.


Thanks to Surya for good insights. I'd clean up his solution and simply do:

for key, value in df.groupby('A'):
    print(key, value)

I confirmed that the behavior of head() changes between version 0.12 and 0.13. That looks like a bug to me. I created an issue.

But a groupby operation doesn't actually return a DataFrame sorted by group. The .head() method is a little misleading here -- it's just a convenience feature to let you re-examine the object (in this case, df) that you grouped. The result of groupby is separate kind of object, a GroupBy object. You must apply, transform, or filter to get back to a DataFrame or Series.

If all you wanted to do was sort by the values in columns A, you should use df.sort('A').


In addition to previous answers:

Taking your example,

df = pd.DataFrame({'A': ['one', 'one', 'two', 'three', 'three', 'one'], 'B': range(6)})

Then simple 1 line code

df.groupby('A').apply(print)