How to get column names in Pandas dataframe

While analyzing the real datasets which are often very huge in size, we might need to get the column names in order to perform some certain operations. Let’s discuss how to get column names in Pandas dataframe. First, let’s create a simple dataframe with nba.csv file. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# making data frame
data = pd.read_csv("https://media.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/nba.csv")

# calling head() method
# storing in new variable
data_top = data.head()

# display
data_top

Now let’s try to get the columns name from above dataset.

Method #1: Simply iterating over columns 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# making data frame
data = pd.read_csv("nba.csv")

# iterating the columns
for col in data.columns:
    print(col)

Output:

Method #2: Using columns attribute with dataframe object 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# making data frame
data = pd.read_csv("nba.csv")

# list(data) or
list(data.columns)

Output:

Method #3: Using keys() function: It will also give the columns of the dataframe.

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# making data frame
data = pd.read_csv("https://media.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/nba.csv")

# calling keys() function
print(data.keys())

Output:

Method #4:  column.values method returns an array of index. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# making data frame
data = pd.read_csv("nba.csv")

list(data.columns.values)

Output:

Method #5: Using tolist() method with values with given the list of columns. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# making data frame
data = pd.read_csv("nba.csv")

list(data.columns.values.tolist())

Output:

Method #6: Using sorted() method : sorted() method will return the list of columns sorted in alphabetical order. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# making data frame
data = pd.read_csv("nba.csv")

# using sorted() method
sorted(data)

Output: