convert pandas dataframe column into multiple columns based on groupby

Question

I have large pandas dataframe with two columns rider_ID and person_ID given as:

ride_ID  person_ID  
 ride_1    person1   
 ride_1    person2    
 ride_1    person3    
 ride_2    person1    
 ride_2    person4    
 ride_3    person1    
 ride_3    person5    
 ride_3    person2    
 ride_3    person3  
 .....     ......
 .....     ......

For each unique ride_ID the number of person_ID could be anything either 2 or 20 or 100. All, I want to apply groupby on column ride_ID such that column person_ID will reflected into multiple columns with columns name as person_ID1 till person_IDn . Expected output as;

ride_ID  person_ID1 person_ID2   person_ID3   person_ID4   person_ID5 ....... person_IDn 

 ride_1   person1    person2      person3      NaN         NaN        ......                           
 ride_2   person1    NaN          NaN          person4     NaN        ......     
 ride_3   person1    person2      person3      NaN         person5 

Answer 1

You can use pivot() . For that, create a column "person_IDx" with values in serial fashion "person_ID1, person_ID2, ..., person_IDn" for each "ride_ID" type:

df = pd.DataFrame(data=[["ride_1","person1"],["ride_1","person2"],["ride_1","person3"],["ride_2","person1"],["ride_2","person4"],["ride_3","person1"],["ride_3","person5"],["ride_3","person2"],["ride_3","person3"]], columns=["ride_ID","person_ID"])

df["person_IDx"] = 1

df["person_IDx"] = df.groupby("ride_ID")["person_IDx"].transform("cumsum").apply(lambda x: f"person_ID{x}")

df = df.pivot(index="ride_ID", columns="person_IDx", values="person_ID").reset_index().rename_axis(columns={"person_IDx":""})

[Out]:
  ride_ID person_ID1 person_ID2 person_ID3 person_ID4
0  ride_1    person1    person2    person3        NaN
1  ride_2    person1    person4        NaN        NaN
2  ride_3    person1    person5    person2    person3