Python pandas - Function to get columns with their names

Question

I have an Excel file :

Test_Case   Value
Case_1      0.988532846
Case_2      0.829241525
Case_3      0.257209267
Case_4      0.871698313
Case_5      0.63913665

with pandas I have seen that we can get a column like this :

import pandas as pd
myExcelFile = "data.xlsx"
readExcelFile = pd.read_excel(myExcelFile, sheet_name=0, index=0)
testCaseColumn = readExceFile.Test_Case

result :

0 Case_1
1 Case_2
2 Case_3
3 Case_4
4 Case_5

The name of the column can be change, and I would like to create a function with two arguments to get the column I want :

def getColumn(readExceFile, columnName):
    return readExceFile.columnName

I would like to know how can I attribute the name of the column to my readExcelFile parameter ?

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

You can use getattr.

def getColumn(readExceFile, columnName):
    return getattr(readExceFile, columnName)

Answer 2

Since your_dataframe.column_name works only with column names w/o space character and you've mentioned that column name can be changed, you can call for column name with your_dataframe.loc[:,'column_name'] (see Alexander Céciles comment).

On the other hand, if your dataset has always the same structure (n-columns, first one with some categorical data, second one with values, etc.) then you can call it also directly with your_dataframe.iloc[:,0], with 0 being your first column-of-interest in the set.

Finally if you really need to have a separate function (besides at least those two I've mentioned) which returns exactly the same output then you may use this:

def get_column(your_dataframe, column_name):
    return your_dataframe.loc[:,column_name]

... what is highly non-pythonic way of writing the code (see Zen of Python)