Python: JSON with list of objects to dataframe

Question

I have a JSON example which I would like to flatten into a pandas DataFrame. I already used to apply some methods which I wrote myself, but I wondered if there is a better/shorter solution to this problem.

JSON example:

{
  "documentName": "test1.json",
  "time": "2020-10-10T08:00:00Z",
  "data": [
    {
      "name":"john",
      "scores": [
        {
          "event":"one",
          "score":10
        },
        {
          "event":"two",
          "score":10
        },
        {
          "event":"three",
          "score":10
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name":"mary",
      "scores": [
        {
          "event":"one",
          "score":10
        },
        {
          "event":"two",
          "score":5
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name":"hope",
      "scores": [
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Desired output DataFrame:

index	documentName	time	name	one	two	three
0	test1.json	2020-10-10T08:00:00Z	john	10	10	10
1	test1.json	2020-10-10T08:00:00Z	mary	10	5	Null
2	test1.json	2020-10-10T08:00:00Z	hope	Null	Null	Null

So the event names will be added as columns and filled accordingly. There are 4 events, but if there is a possibility to have the amount and named events checked dynamically (so not fixed), that would be a huge plus.

As for now I used the following methods:

def object_to_columns(df_row,column):
  if isinstance(df_row[column], dict):
    for key, value in df_row[column].items():
      column_name = "{}-{}".format(column.lower(), key.lower())
      df_row[column_name] = value
  return df_row

def list_of_objects_to_columns(df_row,column):
  if isinstance(df_row[column], list):
    for item in df_row[column]:
      column_name = f"{item['event']}"
      df_row[column_name] = item['score']
  return df_row

with open("test1.json") as file:
  df = pd.read_json(file)
  df = df.apply(object_to_columns, column="data", axis=1)
  df = df.apply(list_of_objects_to_columns, column="data-scores", axis-1)

### CODE TO REMOVE UNUSED COLUMNS AND RENAMING ###

Ideas which are better, cleaner, faster?

Answer 1

A more straightforward way is to use json_normalize but you lost the information about 'hope':

import pandas as pd
import json

with open("data.json") as file:
    data = json.load(file)

out = pd.json_normalize(data, ['data', 'scores'],
                        meta=['documentName', 'time', ['data', 'name']]) \
        .pivot(index=['documentName', 'time', 'data.name'],
               columns='event', values='score').reset_index()

Output:

>>> out
event documentName                  time data.name   one  three   two
0       test1.json  2020-10-10T08:00:00Z      john  10.0   10.0  10.0
1       test1.json  2020-10-10T08:00:00Z      mary  10.0    NaN   5.0

Update Another option to keep 'hope' row:

with open("data.json") as file:
    data = json.load(file)

out = pd.json_normalize(data, 'data', meta=['documentName', 'time']) \
        .explode('scores', ignore_index=True)

out[['event', 'score']] = out.pop('scores').dropna() \
                             .agg(lambda x: pd.Series(x.values()))

out = out.pivot(index=['documentName', 'time', 'name'],
                columns='event', values='score') \
         .reset_index().drop(columns=np.NaN)

Output:

>>> out
event documentName                  time  name   one  three   two
0       test1.json  2020-10-10T08:00:00Z  hope   NaN    NaN   NaN
1       test1.json  2020-10-10T08:00:00Z  john  10.0   10.0  10.0
2       test1.json  2020-10-10T08:00:00Z  mary  10.0    NaN   5.0