If I have a dataframe with the following columns:

1. NAME                                     object
2. On_Time                                      object
3. On_Budget                                    object
4. %actual_hr                                  float64
5. Baseline Start Date                  datetime64[ns]
6. Forecast Start Date                  datetime64[ns] 

I would like to be able to say: here is a dataframe, give me a list of the columns which are of type Object or of type DateTime?

I have a function which converts numbers (Float64) to two decimal places, and I would like to use this list of dataframe columns, of a particular type, and run it through this function to convert them all to 2dp.

Maybe:

For c in col_list: if c.dtype = "Something"
list[]
List.append(c)?

If you want a list of columns of a certain type, you can use groupby:

>>> df = pd.DataFrame([[1, 2.3456, 'c', 'd', 78]], columns=list("ABCDE"))
>>> df
   A       B  C  D   E
0  1  2.3456  c  d  78

[1 rows x 5 columns]
>>> df.dtypes
A      int64
B    float64
C     object
D     object
E      int64
dtype: object
>>> g = df.columns.to_series().groupby(df.dtypes).groups
>>> g
{dtype('int64'): ['A', 'E'], dtype('float64'): ['B'], dtype('O'): ['C', 'D']}
>>> {k.name: v for k, v in g.items()}
{'object': ['C', 'D'], 'int64': ['A', 'E'], 'float64': ['B']}

As of pandas v0.14.1, you can utilize select_dtypes() to select columns by dtype

In [2]: df = pd.DataFrame({'NAME': list('abcdef'),
    'On_Time': [True, False] * 3,
    'On_Budget': [False, True] * 3})

In [3]: df.select_dtypes(include=['bool'])
Out[3]:
  On_Budget On_Time
0     False    True
1      True   False
2     False    True
3      True   False
4     False    True
5      True   False

In [4]: mylist = list(df.select_dtypes(include=['bool']).columns)

In [5]: mylist
Out[5]: ['On_Budget', 'On_Time']

Using dtype will give you desired column’s data type:

dataframe['column1'].dtype

if you want to know data types of all the column at once, you can use plural of dtype as dtypes:

dataframe.dtypes

You can use boolean mask on the dtypes attribute:

In [11]: df = pd.DataFrame([[1, 2.3456, 'c']])

In [12]: df.dtypes
Out[12]: 
0      int64
1    float64
2     object
dtype: object

In [13]: msk = df.dtypes == np.float64  # or object, etc.

In [14]: msk
Out[14]: 
0    False
1     True
2    False
dtype: bool

You can look at just those columns with the desired dtype:

In [15]: df.loc[:, msk]
Out[15]: 
        1
0  2.3456

Now you can use round (or whatever) and assign it back:

In [16]: np.round(df.loc[:, msk], 2)
Out[16]: 
      1
0  2.35

In [17]: df.loc[:, msk] = np.round(df.loc[:, msk], 2)

In [18]: df
Out[18]: 
   0     1  2
0  1  2.35  c

list(df.select_dtypes(['object']).columns)

This should do the trick

use df.info(verbose=True) where df is a pandas datafarme, by default verbose=False

The most direct way to get a list of columns of certain dtype e.g. ‘object’:

df.select_dtypes(include='object').columns

For example:

>>df = pd.DataFrame([[1, 2.3456, 'c', 'd', 78]], columns=list("ABCDE"))
>>df.dtypes

A      int64
B    float64
C     object
D     object
E      int64
dtype: object

To get all ‘object’ dtype columns:

>>df.select_dtypes(include='object').columns

Index(['C', 'D'], dtype='object')

For just the list:

>>list(df.select_dtypes(include='object').columns)

['C', 'D']   

If you want a list of only the object columns you could do:

non_numerics = [x for x in df.columns \
                if not (df[x].dtype == np.float64 \
                        or df[x].dtype == np.int64)]

and then if you want to get another list of only the numerics:

numerics = [x for x in df.columns if x not in non_numerics]

I came up with this three liner.

Essentially, here’s what it does:

1. Fetch the column names and their respective data types.
2. I am optionally outputting it to a csv.

inp = pd.read_csv('filename.csv') # read input. Add read_csv arguments as needed
columns = pd.DataFrame({'column_names': inp.columns, 'datatypes': inp.dtypes})
columns.to_csv(inp+'columns_list.csv', encoding='utf-8') # encoding is optional

This made my life much easier in trying to generate schemas on the fly. Hope this helps

for yoshiserry;

def col_types(x,pd):
    dtypes=x.dtypes
    dtypes_col=dtypes.index
    dtypes_type=dtypes.value
    column_types=dict(zip(dtypes_col,dtypes_type))
    return column_types

I use infer_objects()

Docstring: Attempt to infer better dtypes for object columns.

Attempts soft conversion of object-dtyped columns, leaving non-object and unconvertible columns unchanged. The inference rules are the same as during normal Series/DataFrame construction.

df.infer_objects().dtypes