How to group dataframe rows into list in pandas groupby

You can do this using groupby to group on the column of interest and then apply list to every group:

In [1]: df = pd.DataFrame( {'a':['A','A','B','B','B','C'], 'b':[1,2,5,5,4,6]})
        df

Out[1]: 
   a  b
0  A  1
1  A  2
2  B  5
3  B  5
4  B  4
5  C  6

In [2]: df.groupby('a')['b'].apply(list)
Out[2]: 
a
A       [1, 2]
B    [5, 5, 4]
C          [6]
Name: b, dtype: object

In [3]: df1 = df.groupby('a')['b'].apply(list).reset_index(name='new')
        df1
Out[3]: 
   a        new
0  A     [1, 2]
1  B  [5, 5, 4]
2  C        [6]

A handy way to achieve this would be:

df.groupby('a').agg({'b':lambda x: list(x)})

Look into writing Custom Aggregations: https://www.kaggle.com/akshaysehgal/how-to-group-by-aggregate-using-py

If performance is important go down to numpy level:

import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame({'a': np.random.randint(0, 60, 600), 'b': [1, 2, 5, 5, 4, 6]*100})

def f(df):
         keys, values = df.sort_values('a').values.T
         ukeys, index = np.unique(keys, True)
         arrays = np.split(values, index[1:])
         df2 = pd.DataFrame({'a':ukeys, 'b':[list(a) for a in arrays]})
         return df2

Tests:

In [301]: %timeit f(df)
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.64 ms per loop

In [302]: %timeit df.groupby('a')['b'].apply(list)
100 loops, best of 3: 5.26 ms per loop

To solve this for several columns of a dataframe:

In [5]: df = pd.DataFrame( {'a':['A','A','B','B','B','C'], 'b':[1,2,5,5,4,6],'c'
   ...: :[3,3,3,4,4,4]})

In [6]: df
Out[6]: 
   a  b  c
0  A  1  3
1  A  2  3
2  B  5  3
3  B  5  4
4  B  4  4
5  C  6  4

In [7]: df.groupby('a').agg(lambda x: list(x))
Out[7]: 
           b          c
a                      
A     [1, 2]     [3, 3]
B  [5, 5, 4]  [3, 4, 4]
C        [6]        [4]

This answer was inspired from Anamika Modi's answer. Thank you!

Use any of the following groupby and agg recipes.

# Setup
df = pd.DataFrame({
  'a': ['A', 'A', 'B', 'B', 'B', 'C'],
  'b': [1, 2, 5, 5, 4, 6],
  'c': ['x', 'y', 'z', 'x', 'y', 'z']
})
df

   a  b  c
0  A  1  x
1  A  2  y
2  B  5  z
3  B  5  x
4  B  4  y
5  C  6  z

To aggregate multiple columns as lists, use any of the following:

df.groupby('a').agg(list)
df.groupby('a').agg(pd.Series.tolist)

           b          c
a                      
A     [1, 2]     [x, y]
B  [5, 5, 4]  [z, x, y]
C        [6]        [z]

To group-listify a single column only, convert the groupby to a SeriesGroupBy object, then call SeriesGroupBy.agg. Use,

df.groupby('a').agg({'b': list})  # 4.42 ms 
df.groupby('a')['b'].agg(list)    # 2.76 ms - faster

a
A       [1, 2]
B    [5, 5, 4]
C          [6]
Name: b, dtype: object

As you were saying the groupby method of a pd.DataFrame object can do the job.

Example

 L = ['A','A','B','B','B','C']
 N = [1,2,5,5,4,6]

 import pandas as pd
 df = pd.DataFrame(zip(L,N),columns = list('LN'))


 groups = df.groupby(df.L)

 groups.groups
      {'A': [0, 1], 'B': [2, 3, 4], 'C': [5]}

which gives and index-wise description of the groups.

To get elements of single groups, you can do, for instance

 groups.get_group('A')

     L  N
  0  A  1
  1  A  2

  groups.get_group('B')

     L  N
  2  B  5
  3  B  5
  4  B  4

It is time to use agg instead of apply .

When

df = pd.DataFrame( {'a':['A','A','B','B','B','C'], 'b':[1,2,5,5,4,6], 'c': [1,2,5,5,4,6]})

If you want multiple columns stack into list , result in pd.DataFrame

df.groupby('a')[['b', 'c']].agg(list)
# or 
df.groupby('a').agg(list)

If you want single column in list, result in ps.Series

df.groupby('a')['b'].agg(list)
#or
df.groupby('a')['b'].apply(list)

Note, result in pd.DataFrame is about 10x slower than result in ps.Series when you only aggregate single column, use it in multicolumns case .

Just a suplyment. pandas.pivot_table is much more universal and seems more convenient：

"""data"""
df = pd.DataFrame( {'a':['A','A','B','B','B','C'],
                    'b':[1,2,5,5,4,6],
                    'c':[1,2,1,1,1,6]})
print(df)

   a  b  c
0  A  1  1
1  A  2  2
2  B  5  1
3  B  5  1
4  B  4  1
5  C  6  6

"""pivot_table"""
pt = pd.pivot_table(df,
                    values=['b', 'c'],
                    index='a',
                    aggfunc={'b': list,
                             'c': set})
print(pt)
           b       c
a                   
A     [1, 2]  {1, 2}
B  [5, 5, 4]     {1}
C        [6]     {6}

If looking for a unique list while grouping multiple columns this could probably help:

df.groupby('a').agg(lambda x: list(set(x))).reset_index()

The easiest way I have found to achieve the same thing, at least for one column, which is similar to Anamika's answer, just with the tuple syntax for the aggregate function.

df.groupby('a').agg(b=('b','unique'), c=('c','unique'))

Building upon @B.M answer, here is a more general version and updated to work with newer library version: (numpy version 1.19.2, pandas version 1.2.1) And this solution can also deal with multi-indices:

However this is not heavily tested, use with caution.

If performance is important go down to numpy level:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

np.random.seed(0)
df = pd.DataFrame({'a': np.random.randint(0, 10, 90), 'b': [1,2,3]*30, 'c':list('abcefghij')*10, 'd': list('hij')*30})


def f_multi(df,col_names):
    if not isinstance(col_names,list):
        col_names = [col_names]
        
    values = df.sort_values(col_names).values.T

    col_idcs = [df.columns.get_loc(cn) for cn in col_names]
    other_col_names = [name for idx, name in enumerate(df.columns) if idx not in col_idcs]
    other_col_idcs = [df.columns.get_loc(cn) for cn in other_col_names]

    # split df into indexing colums(=keys) and data colums(=vals)
    keys = values[col_idcs,:]
    vals = values[other_col_idcs,:]
    
    # list of tuple of key pairs
    multikeys = list(zip(*keys))
    
    # remember unique key pairs and ther indices
    ukeys, index = np.unique(multikeys, return_index=True, axis=0)
    
    # split data columns according to those indices
    arrays = np.split(vals, index[1:], axis=1)

    # resulting list of subarrays has same number of subarrays as unique key pairs
    # each subarray has the following shape:
    #    rows = number of non-grouped data columns
    #    cols = number of data points grouped into that unique key pair
    
    # prepare multi index
    idx = pd.MultiIndex.from_arrays(ukeys.T, names=col_names) 

    list_agg_vals = dict()
    for tup in zip(*arrays, other_col_names):
        col_vals = tup[:-1] # first entries are the subarrays from above 
        col_name = tup[-1]  # last entry is data-column name
        
        list_agg_vals[col_name] = col_vals

    df2 = pd.DataFrame(data=list_agg_vals, index=idx)
    return df2

Tests:

In [227]: %timeit f_multi(df, ['a','d'])

2.54 ms ± 64.7 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)

In [228]: %timeit df.groupby(['a','d']).agg(list)

4.56 ms ± 61.5 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100 loops each)

Results:

for the random seed 0 one would get:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/nIxVD.png

Let us using df.groupby with list and Series constructor

pd.Series({x : y.b.tolist() for x , y in df.groupby('a')})
Out[664]: 
A       [1, 2]
B    [5, 5, 4]
C          [6]
dtype: object

Here I have grouped elements with "|" as a separator

    import pandas as pd

    df = pd.read_csv('input.csv')

    df
    Out[1]:
      Area  Keywords
    0  A  1
    1  A  2
    2  B  5
    3  B  5
    4  B  4
    5  C  6

    df.dropna(inplace =  True)
    df['Area']=df['Area'].apply(lambda x:x.lower().strip())
    print df.columns
    df_op = df.groupby('Area').agg({"Keywords":lambda x : "|".join(x)})

    df_op.to_csv('output.csv')
    Out[2]:
    df_op
    Area  Keywords

    A       [1| 2]
    B    [5| 5| 4]
    C          [6]

Answer based on @EdChum's comment on his answer. Comment is this -

groupby is notoriously slow and memory hungry, what you could do is sort by column A, then find the idxmin and idxmax (probably store this in a dict) and use this to slice your dataframe would be faster I think 

Let's first create a dataframe with 500k categories in first column and total df shape 20 million as mentioned in question.

df = pd.DataFrame(columns=['a', 'b'])
df['a'] = (np.random.randint(low=0, high=500000, size=(20000000,))).astype(str)
df['b'] = list(range(20000000))
print(df.shape)
df.head()

# Sort data by first column 
df.sort_values(by=['a'], ascending=True, inplace=True)
df.reset_index(drop=True, inplace=True)

# Create a temp column
df['temp_idx'] = list(range(df.shape[0]))

# Take all values of b in a separate list
all_values_b = list(df.b.values)
print(len(all_values_b))

# For each category in column a, find min and max indexes
gp_df = df.groupby(['a']).agg({'temp_idx': [np.min, np.max]})
gp_df.reset_index(inplace=True)
gp_df.columns = ['a', 'temp_idx_min', 'temp_idx_max']

# Now create final list_b column, using min and max indexes for each category of a and filtering list of b. 
gp_df['list_b'] = gp_df[['temp_idx_min', 'temp_idx_max']].apply(lambda x: all_values_b[x[0]:x[1]+1], axis=1)

print(gp_df.shape)
gp_df.head()

This above code takes 2 minutes for 20 million rows and 500k categories in first column.

Sorting consumes O(nlog(n)) time which is the most time consuming operation in the solutions suggested above

For a simple solution (containing single column) pd.Series.to_list would work and can be considered more efficient unless considering other frameworks

e.g.

import pandas as pd
from string import ascii_lowercase
import random

def generate_string(case=4):
    return ''.join([random.choice(ascii_lowercase) for _ in range(case)])

df = pd.DataFrame({'num_val':[random.randint(0,100) for _ in range(20000000)],'string_val':[generate_string() for _ in range(20000000)]})


%timeit df.groupby('string_val').agg({'num_val':pd.Series.to_list})

For 20 million records it takes about 17.2 seconds. compared to apply(list) which takes about 19.2 and lambda function which takes about 20.6s