How to reorder columns in pandas

Pandas is one of the most famous tools in the data sciences field. We have a built-in library for data manipulation and analysis in Python. We can easily clean, process, and manipulate data stored in the data frame; pandas give several methods and functions. The DataFrame consists of rows and columns, which are easily accessible by using the Python library. We can also change the order of the rows and columns by using pandas. Here we specifically discuss the reordering of the columns.

Import libraries and load the DataFrame

Now, first of all, we import the pandas library and load the data frame which we will use for reordering.

# Import the library and assign variable to this library
import pandas as pd
# Load a sample data frame
data = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(
    {
        'Username' : ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E'],
        'Gender' : ['Male', 'Female', 'Female', 'Male', 'Male'],
        'Age' : [15, 18, 16, 14, 15],
        'Score' : [8, 9, 7, 8, 6]
    }
)
# print the data frame 
print (data)

Code explanation

  • Line 2: We import pandas library as pd.

  • Lines 4–10: We load a sample DataFrame by using the from_dict library.

  • Line 13: We print a DataFrame.

Reorder columns by using the pandas library

We have multiple methods for reordering the columns in the pandas library.

Method 1: Direct way for reordering

We can directly reorder the columns by shuffling the column's name in the DataFrame.

# Data frame's column reshuffle
dt = data[['Username','Score', 'Age', 'Gender']]
# print the data frame 
print (dt)

Method 2: The iloc method of reordering

Now we are using the iloc method for reordering the column. In this method, we will use the index of the Dataframe to change the order of the column.

# use iloc method
dt = data.iloc[:,[0,3,1,2]]
# print the data frame 
print (dt)

Method 3: The loc method for reordering

Now we are using the loc method for reordering the column. In this method, we will use the column names of the DataFrame to change the order of the column.

# use loc method
dt = data.loc[:,['Age','Gender','Username','Score']]
# print the data frame 
print (dt)

Method 4: The reverse() function for reordering

In this method, we will use the reverse function for reordering the column.

# use the reverse functions
col = list(data.columns)
col.reverse()
# print the data frame 
print(data[col])

Here, we have discussed four methods for reordering the column, we can use any of them according to the situation.

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