Guide to handling DataFrame headers in Python : Adding header row to dataframe

In pandas, DataFrame headers are essentially the column names. These are not usually added to the DataFrame directly as you would add a row. Instead, they’re specified upon the creation of the DataFrame or reassigned after it’s been created. However, if your data comes without a header, and the first row of your data actually represents the header, you might need to promote this row to the header of your DataFrame.

Here’s an example of how to do this. We’ll create a DataFrame without headers first and then set the headers using the first row.

Creating DataFrame without headers:

First, we simulate the scenario where we have data without headers.

import pandas as pd
# Sample data 
data = [
    ['Name', 'Age', 'Occupation'],
    ['Sachin', 25, 'Data Scientist'],
    ['Ram', 30, 'Software Engineer'],
    ['Jose', 22, 'Doctor']
]
# Create a DataFrame without headers
df = pd.DataFrame(data)
print(df)

      0   1                2
0  Name  Age       Occupation
1  Sachin   25   Data Scientist
2   Ram   30  Software Engineer
3  Jose   22            Doctor

# Set the first row as the header
header = df.iloc[0]
# Create a new DataFrame without the first row
df = df[1:]
# Set the header row as the df header
df.columns = header
print(df)

0  Name Age       Occupation
1  Sachin 25   Data Scientist
2  Ram  30  Software Engineer
3  Jose  22            Doctor

# Create a DataFrame with headers
df_with_headers = pd.DataFrame(data[1:], columns=data[0])
print(df_with_headers)