polars.DataFrame.pivot#

DataFrame.pivot(
on: ColumnNameOrSelector | Sequence[ColumnNameOrSelector],
*,
index: ColumnNameOrSelector | Sequence[ColumnNameOrSelector] | None = None,
values: ColumnNameOrSelector | Sequence[ColumnNameOrSelector] | None = None,
aggregate_function: PivotAgg | Expr | None = None,
maintain_order: bool = True,
sort_columns: bool = False,
separator: str = '_',
) → DataFrame[source]#

Create a spreadsheet-style pivot table as a DataFrame.

Only available in eager mode. See “Examples” section below for how to do a “lazy pivot” if you know the unique column values in advance.

Parameters:
on

Name of the column(s) whose values will be used as the header of the output DataFrame.

index

One or multiple keys to group by. If None, all remaining columns not specified on on and values will be used. At least one of index and values must be specified.

values

One or multiple keys to group by. If None, all remaining columns not specified on on and index will be used. At least one of index and values must be specified.

aggregate_function

Choose from:

  • None: no aggregation takes place, will raise error if multiple values are in group.

  • A predefined aggregate function string, one of {‘min’, ‘max’, ‘first’, ‘last’, ‘sum’, ‘mean’, ‘median’, ‘len’}

  • An expression to do the aggregation.

maintain_order

Sort the grouped keys so that the output order is predictable.

sort_columns

Sort the transposed columns by name. Default is by order of discovery.

separator

Used as separator/delimiter in generated column names in case of multiple values columns.

Returns:
DataFrame

Notes

In some other frameworks, you might know this operation as pivot_wider.

Examples

You can use pivot to reshape a dataframe from “long” to “wide” format.

For example, suppose we have a dataframe of test scores achieved by some students, where each row represents a distinct test.

>>> df = pl.DataFrame(
...     {
...         "name": ["Cady", "Cady", "Karen", "Karen"],
...         "subject": ["maths", "physics", "maths", "physics"],
...         "test_1": [98, 99, 61, 58],
...         "test_2": [100, 100, 60, 60],
...     }
... )
>>> df
shape: (4, 4)
┌───────┬─────────┬────────┬────────┐
│ name  ┆ subject ┆ test_1 ┆ test_2 │
│ ---   ┆ ---     ┆ ---    ┆ ---    │
│ str   ┆ str     ┆ i64    ┆ i64    │
╞═══════╪═════════╪════════╪════════╡
│ Cady  ┆ maths   ┆ 98     ┆ 100    │
│ Cady  ┆ physics ┆ 99     ┆ 100    │
│ Karen ┆ maths   ┆ 61     ┆ 60     │
│ Karen ┆ physics ┆ 58     ┆ 60     │
└───────┴─────────┴────────┴────────┘

Using pivot, we can reshape so we have one row per student, with different subjects as columns, and their test_1 scores as values:

>>> df.pivot("subject", index="name", values="test_1")
shape: (2, 3)
┌───────┬───────┬─────────┐
│ name  ┆ maths ┆ physics │
│ ---   ┆ ---   ┆ ---     │
│ str   ┆ i64   ┆ i64     │
╞═══════╪═══════╪═════════╡
│ Cady  ┆ 98    ┆ 99      │
│ Karen ┆ 61    ┆ 58      │
└───────┴───────┴─────────┘

You can use selectors too - here we include all test scores in the pivoted table:

>>> import polars.selectors as cs
>>> df.pivot("subject", values=cs.starts_with("test"))
shape: (2, 5)
┌───────┬──────────────┬────────────────┬──────────────┬────────────────┐
│ name  ┆ test_1_maths ┆ test_1_physics ┆ test_2_maths ┆ test_2_physics │
│ ---   ┆ ---          ┆ ---            ┆ ---          ┆ ---            │
│ str   ┆ i64          ┆ i64            ┆ i64          ┆ i64            │
╞═══════╪══════════════╪════════════════╪══════════════╪════════════════╡
│ Cady  ┆ 98           ┆ 99             ┆ 100          ┆ 100            │
│ Karen ┆ 61           ┆ 58             ┆ 60           ┆ 60             │
└───────┴──────────────┴────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────┘

If you end up with multiple values per cell, you can specify how to aggregate them with aggregate_function:

>>> df = pl.DataFrame(
...     {
...         "ix": [1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2],
...         "col": ["a", "a", "a", "a", "b", "b"],
...         "foo": [0, 1, 2, 2, 7, 1],
...         "bar": [0, 2, 0, 0, 9, 4],
...     }
... )
>>> df.pivot("col", index="ix", aggregate_function="sum")
shape: (2, 5)
┌─────┬───────┬───────┬───────┬───────┐
│ ix  ┆ foo_a ┆ foo_b ┆ bar_a ┆ bar_b │
│ --- ┆ ---   ┆ ---   ┆ ---   ┆ ---   │
│ i64 ┆ i64   ┆ i64   ┆ i64   ┆ i64   │
╞═════╪═══════╪═══════╪═══════╪═══════╡
│ 1   ┆ 1     ┆ 7     ┆ 2     ┆ 9     │
│ 2   ┆ 4     ┆ 1     ┆ 0     ┆ 4     │
└─────┴───────┴───────┴───────┴───────┘

You can also pass a custom aggregation function using polars.element():

>>> df = pl.DataFrame(
...     {
...         "col1": ["a", "a", "a", "b", "b", "b"],
...         "col2": ["x", "x", "x", "x", "y", "y"],
...         "col3": [6, 7, 3, 2, 5, 7],
...     }
... )
>>> df.pivot(
...     "col2",
...     index="col1",
...     values="col3",
...     aggregate_function=pl.element().tanh().mean(),
... )
shape: (2, 3)
┌──────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ col1 ┆ x        ┆ y        │
│ ---  ┆ ---      ┆ ---      │
│ str  ┆ f64      ┆ f64      │
╞══════╪══════════╪══════════╡
│ a    ┆ 0.998347 ┆ null     │
│ b    ┆ 0.964028 ┆ 0.999954 │
└──────┴──────────┴──────────┘

Note that pivot is only available in eager mode. If you know the unique column values in advance, you can use polars.LazyFrame.group_by() to get the same result as above in lazy mode:

>>> index = pl.col("col1")
>>> on = pl.col("col2")
>>> values = pl.col("col3")
>>> unique_column_values = ["x", "y"]
>>> aggregate_function = lambda col: col.tanh().mean()
>>> df.lazy().group_by(index).agg(
...     aggregate_function(values.filter(on == value)).alias(value)
...     for value in unique_column_values
... ).collect()  
shape: (2, 3)
┌──────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ col1 ┆ x        ┆ y        │
│ ---  ┆ ---      ┆ ---      │
│ str  ┆ f64      ┆ f64      │
╞══════╪══════════╪══════════╡
│ a    ┆ 0.998347 ┆ null     │
│ b    ┆ 0.964028 ┆ 0.999954 │
└──────┴──────────┴──────────┘
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