CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonrpandasspssrpy2
Pyderman
Pyderman

Reputation: 16199

How to preserve Labels when SPSS file (.sav) imported into pandas via rpy?

I'm looking to work on a SPSS files (.sav) using pandas. In the absence of the SPSS program, here's what a typical file looks like when converted to .csv:

enter image description here

On investigation into what the first two rows signify (I don't know SPSS), it seems that the first row contains the Labels, while the second row contains the VarNames.

enter image description here

When I bring the file into pandas thus:

import pandas.rpy.common as com

def savtocsv(filename):
    w = com.robj.r('foreign::read.spss("%s", to.data.frame=TRUE)' % filename)
    w = com.convert_robj(w)
    return w

and then do a head(), the first row (Label) is missing:

enter image description here

How can labels be maintained?

Upvotes: 8

Views: 5236

Answers (1)

user2285236
user2285236

Reputation:

Labels in a sav file are stored in variable.labels attribute of the returning object from the read.spss function.

You can get the variable labels with the following:

import pandas.rpy.common as com

def get_labels(filename):
    w = com.robj.r('attr(foreign::read.spss("%s"), "variable.labels")' % filename)
    w = com.convert_robj(w)
    return w

If you want to set the labels as the column names of your dataframe:

import pandas.rpy.common as com

def savtocsv(filename):
    w = com.robj.r('foreign::read.spss("%s", to.data.frame=TRUE)' % filename)
    cols = list(com.robj.r("attr")(w, "variable.labels"))
    w = com.convert_robj(w)
    w.columns = cols
    return w

Upvotes: 6

Related Questions