Pandas Error for creating an emptydataframe

Question

I tried making a dummy dataframe,

column_names = ["a", "b", "c"]

df = pd.DataFrame(columns = column_names)

I am getting the following error, this was not happening before, am I missing something. This is only happening on the creation of an empty dataframe, is this a recently introduced bug.

  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/frame.py", line 411, in __init__
    mgr = init_dict(data, index, columns, dtype=dtype)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/internals/construction.py", line 242, in init_dict
    val = construct_1d_arraylike_from_scalar(np.nan, len(index), nan_dtype)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/dtypes/cast.py", line 1221, in construct_1d_arraylike_from_scalar
    dtype = dtype.dtype
AttributeError: type object 'object' has no attribute 'dtype'

looks similar to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50197832/attributeerror-dataframe-object-has-no-attribute-dtype — Vaishali, Feb 01 '21 at 19:09
Which version of pandas do you use? I am not able to reproduce the error in pandas 1.1.4. — mosc9575, Feb 01 '21 at 19:33
Maybe it solves your problem when you try to update your pandas. — mosc9575, Feb 01 '21 at 19:46

score 43 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 28 '22 at 16:26

43

This was happening with pandas==0.25.3 Updated to the latest pandas==1.2.1

UPDATE: This was due to a numpy package 1.20.0, so I locked the numpy package instead, numpy==1.19.5, pandas==0.25.3

edited Jun 28 '22 at 16:26

Ryan M

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answered Feb 01 '21 at 20:04

Shivangi Singh

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score 37 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '21 at 18:47

37

If for some reason you don't/can't upgrade numpy/pandas, an alternative way to fix this is by specifiying the dtype when creating the DataFrame. For example:

column_names = ["a", "b", "c"]
df = pd.DataFrame(columns = column_names, dtype=object)

answered Apr 22 '21 at 18:47

sander

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Gil Ashkenazi · Answer 3 · 2021-02-07T11:13:20.017

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happening due to numpy==1.20.0, and resolve with numpy==1.19.5. pandas version may not relevant, in my case, pandas==1.0.4

edited Feb 07 '21 at 11:13

answered Feb 07 '21 at 10:36

Gil Ashkenazi

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score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 01 '22 at 11:04

2

pandas version was the problem in my case.

It should work if you shift from

pandas==0.25.3 into pandas==1.2.3

edited Dec 01 '22 at 11:04

Jeru Luke

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answered Apr 09 '21 at 08:14

kunjung sherpa

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Pandas Error for creating an emptydataframe

4 Answers4

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