pandas pivot table using index data of dataframe

Question

I want to create a pivot table from a pandas dataframe using dataframe.pivot() and include not only dataframe columns but also the data within the dataframe index. Couldn't find any docs that show how to do that. Any tips?

Answer 1

Use reset_index to make the index a column:

In [45]: df = pd.DataFrame({'y': [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4], 'x': [1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 3]}, index=np.arange(6)*10)

In [46]: df
Out[46]: 
    x  y
0   1  0
10  2  1
20  2  2
30  3  3
40  1  4
50  3  4

In [47]: df.reset_index()
Out[47]: 
   index  x  y
0      0  1  0
1     10  2  1
2     20  2  2
3     30  3  3
4     40  1  4
5     50  3  4

So pivot uses the index as values:

In [48]: df.reset_index().pivot(index='y', columns='x')
Out[48]: 
   index        
x      1   2   3
y               
0      0 NaN NaN
1    NaN  10 NaN
2    NaN  20 NaN
3    NaN NaN  30
4     40 NaN  50