ENH - GH:17160, DataFrame.pivot accepts a list of values

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt

@@ -129,7 +129,7 @@ Other Enhancements
 - `read_*` methods can now infer compression from non-string paths, such as ``pathlib.Path`` objects (:issue:`17206`).
 - :func:`pd.read_sas()` now recognizes much more of the most frequently used date (datetime) formats in SAS7BDAT files (:issue:`15871`).
 - :func:`DataFrame.items` and :func:`Series.items` is now present in both Python 2 and 3 and is lazy in all cases (:issue:`13918`, :issue:`17213`)
-
+- :func:`DataFrame.pivot` now accepts a list of values (:issue:`17160`).
 
 
 .. _whatsnew_0210.api_breaking:

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -4102,7 +4102,7 @@ def pivot(self, index=None, columns=None, values=None):
             existing index.
         columns : string or object
             Column name to use to make new frame's columns
-        values : string or object, optional
+        values : string, object or a list of the previous, optional
             Column name to use for populating new frame's values. If not
             specified, all remaining columns will be used and the result will
             have hierarchically indexed columns

pandas/core/reshape/reshape.py

@@ -367,15 +367,17 @@ def pivot(self, index=None, columns=None, values=None):
         cols = [columns] if index is None else [index, columns]
         append = index is None
         indexed = self.set_index(cols, append=append)
-        return indexed.unstack(columns)
     else:
-        if index is None:
-            index = self.index
+        index = self.index if index is None else self[index]
+        index = MultiIndex.from_arrays([index, self[columns]])
+        if isinstance(values, list):
+            indexed = DataFrame(self[values].values,
+                                index=index,
+                                columns=values)
         else:
-            index = self[index]
-        indexed = Series(self[values].values,
-                         index=MultiIndex.from_arrays([index, self[columns]]))
-        return indexed.unstack(columns)
+            indexed = Series(self[values].values,
+                             index=index)
+    return indexed.unstack(columns)
 
 
 def pivot_simple(index, columns, values):

pandas/tests/reshape/test_pivot.py

@@ -351,6 +351,29 @@ def test_pivot_periods(self):
         pv = df.pivot(index='p1', columns='p2', values='data1')
         tm.assert_frame_equal(pv, expected)
 
+    def test_pivot_with_multi_values(self):
+        df = pd.DataFrame({'foo': ['one', 'one', 'one', 'two', 'two', 'two'],
+                           'bar': ['A', 'B', 'C', 'A', 'B', 'C'],
+                           'baz': [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6],
+                           'zoo': ['x', 'y', 'z', 'q', 'w', 't']})
+
+        results = df.pivot(index='zoo', columns='foo', values=['bar', 'baz'])
+
+        data = [[None, 'A', None, 4],
+                [None, 'C', None, 6],
+                [None, 'B', None, 5],
+                ['A', None, 1, None],
+                ['B', None, 2, None],
+                ['C', None, 3, None]]
+        index = Index(data=['q', 't', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z'], name='zoo')
+        columns = MultiIndex(levels=[['bar', 'baz'], ['one', 'two']],
+                             labels=[[0, 0, 1, 1], [0, 1, 0, 1]],
+                             names=[None, 'foo'])
+        expected = DataFrame(data=data, index=index,
+                             columns=columns, dtype='object')
+
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(results, expected)
+
     def test_margins(self):
         def _check_output(result, values_col, index=['A', 'B'],
                           columns=['C'],