janitor.change_type

janitor.change_type(df: pandas.core.frame.DataFrame, column_name: Hashable, dtype: type, ignore_exception: bool = False) → pandas.core.frame.DataFrame[source]

Change the type of a column.

This method mutates the original DataFrame.

Exceptions that are raised can be ignored. For example, if one has a mixed dtype column that has non-integer strings and integers, and you want to coerce everything to integers, you can optionally ignore the non-integer strings and replace them with NaN or keep the original value

Intended to be the method-chaining alternative to:

df[col] = df[col].astype(dtype)

Method chaining syntax:

df = pd.DataFrame(...).change_type('col1', str)
Parameters

  • df – A pandas dataframe.

  • column_name – A column in the dataframe.

  • dtype – The datatype to convert to. Should be one of the standard Python types, or a numpy datatype.

  • ignore_exception – one of {False, "fillna", "keep_values"}.

Returns

A pandas DataFrame with changed column types.

Raises

ValueError – if unknown option provided for ignore_exception.