python - Pandas DataFrame to List of Dictionaries

Question

I have the following DataFrame:

customer    item1      item2    item3
1           apple      milk     tomato
2           water      orange   potato
3           juice      mango    chips

which I want to translate it to list of dictionaries per row

rows = [
    {
        'customer': 1,
        'item1': 'apple',
        'item2': 'milk',
        'item3': 'tomato'
    }, {
        'customer': 2,
        'item1':
        'water',
        'item2': 'orange',
        'item3': 'potato'
    }, {
        'customer': 3,
        'item1': 'juice',
        'item2': 'mango',
        'item3': 'chips'
    }
]

Answer 1

Use df.to_dict('records') -- gives the output without having to transpose externally.

In [2]: df.to_dict('records')
Out[2]:
[{'customer': 1L, 'item1': 'apple', 'item2': 'milk', 'item3': 'tomato'},
 {'customer': 2L, 'item1': 'water', 'item2': 'orange', 'item3': 'potato'},
 {'customer': 3L, 'item1': 'juice', 'item2': 'mango', 'item3': 'chips'}]