In this article, we will discuss different ways to select first row of dataframe in pandas.
Select & print first row of dataframe using iloc[]
Before diving deep into the solution, let’s first have a look at the dataframe’s iloc.
Overview of dataframe iloc[]
Pandas provides a dataframe attribute iloc[] for location based indexing i.e.
dataframe.iloc[row_section, col_section] dataframe.iloc[row_section]
Arguments if iloc[]
- row_section: It can be,
- A row number
- A list of row numbers
- A range of row numbers – start:end i.e. from start to end-1.
- column_section: It can be
- A column number
- A column of row numbers
- A range of column numbers – start:end i.e. from start to end-1.
It selects the subset of dataframe based on the row/column numbers specified in these row & column sections.
Get first row of pandas dataframe as a series
To select the first row of dataframe using iloc[], we can just skip the column section and in row section pass the 1 as row number. It will select the first row i.e. row at index 0,
df.iloc[0]
We got the first row of dataframe as a series object.
Get first row of pandas dataframe as a dataframe
If you want the first row of dataframe as a dataframe object then you can provide the range i.e.[:1], instead of direct number i.e.
df.iloc[:1]
It will select the rows from number 0 to 1 and return the first row of dataframe as a dataframe object.
Learn More about iloc[] and loc[] properties of Dataframe,
Complete example:
Let’s see an example, where we will select and print the first row of dataframe using both the specified ways,
import pandas as pd
# List of Tuples
employees = [('Jack', 34, 'Sydney', 5) ,
('Shaun', 31, 'Delhi' , 7) ,
('Shachin', 16, 'London', 3) ,
('Eva', 41, 'Delhi' , 4)]
# Create a DataFrame object
df = pd.DataFrame( employees,
columns=['Name', 'Age', 'City', 'Experience'])
print("Contents of the Dataframe : ")
print(df)
# Select first row of the dataframe as a series
first_row = df.iloc[0]
print("First row Of Dataframe: ")
print(first_row)
# Select first row of the dataframe as a dataframe object
first_row_df = df.iloc[:1]
print("First row Of Dataframe: ")
print(first_row_df)
Output:
Contents of the Dataframe :
Name Age City Experience
0 Jack 34 Sydney 5
1 Shaun 31 Delhi 7
2 Shachin 16 London 3
3 Eva 41 Delhi 4
First row Of Dataframe:
Name Jack
Age 34
City Sydney
Experience 5
Name: 0, dtype: object
First row Of Dataframe:
Name Age City Experience
0 Jack 34 Sydney 5
At, first We selected the first row of dataframe as a series object & printed it. After that we selected the first row as a dataframe and then again printed it.
Select & print first row of dataframe using head()
In Pandas, the dataframe provides a function head(n). It returns the first n rows of dataframe. We can use this head() function to get only the first row of the dataframe,
df.head(1)
It will return the first row of dataframe as a dataframe object.
Let’s see a complete example,
import pandas as pd
# List of Tuples
employees = [('Jack', 34, 'Sydney', 5) ,
('Shaun', 31, 'Delhi' , 7) ,
('Shachin', 16, 'London', 3) ,
('Eva', 41, 'Delhi' , 4)]
# Create a DataFrame object
df = pd.DataFrame( employees,
columns=['Name', 'Age', 'City', 'Experience'])
print("Contents of the Dataframe : ")
print(df)
# Select first row of the dataframe
first_row = df.head(1)
print("First row Of Dataframe: ")
print(first_row)
Output:
Contents of the Dataframe :
Name Age City Experience
0 Jack 34 Sydney 5
1 Shaun 31 Delhi 7
2 Shachin 16 London 3
3 Eva 41 Delhi 4
First row Of Dataframe:
Name Age City Experience
0 Jack 34 Sydney 5
Using the head() function, we fetched the first row of dataframe as a dataframe and then just printed it.
Get first row of pandas dataframe as list
We can select the first row of dataframe using df.iloc[0]. It will give us a series object and then using the series’s tolist() function, we can get a list containing the contents of first row of dataframe. For example,
import pandas as pd
# List of Tuples
employees = [('Jack', 34, 'Sydney', 5) ,
('Shaun', 31, 'Delhi' , 7) ,
('Shachin', 16, 'London', 3) ,
('Eva', 41, 'Delhi' , 4)]
# Create a DataFrame object
df = pd.DataFrame( employees,
columns=['Name', 'Age', 'City', 'Experience'])
print("Contents of the Dataframe : ")
print(df)
# Select first row as list
first_row = df.iloc[0].tolist()
print("First row Of Dataframe: ")
print(first_row)
Output:
Contents of the Dataframe :
Name Age City Experience
0 Jack 34 Sydney 5
1 Shaun 31 Delhi 7
2 Shachin 16 London 3
3 Eva 41 Delhi 4
First row Of Dataframe:
['Jack', 34, 'Sydney', 5]
Summary:
We learned about different ways to get the first row of dataframe.