python - Inserting new rows in pandas data frame at specific indices

Question

I have a following data frame df with two columns "identifier", "values" and "subid":

     identifier   values    subid
0      1          101       1
1      1          102       1
2      1          103       2 #index in list x        
3      1          104       2
4      1          105       2
5      2          106       3   
6      2          107       3
7      2          108       3
8      2          109       4 #index in list x
9      2          110       4
10     3          111       5
11     3          112       5 
12     3          113       6 #index in list x

I have a list of indices, say

x = [2, 8, 12] 

I want insert rows just before the indices mentioned in the list x. Like, for the row which is inserted just before index 2, will have the following values, it will have the same identifier as the row at index 2, i.e. 1; same values as the row at index 2, i.e. 103; but the subid in the new row would be ((subid at index 2) - 1), or simply the subid from the previous row i.e 1.

Below is the final resultant df I expect:

   identifier   values    subid
0      1          101       1
1      1          102       1
2      1          103       1 #new row inserted     
3      1          103       2 #index in list x        
4      1          104       2
5      1          105       2
6      2          106       3   
7      2          107       3
8      2          108       3
9      2          109       3 #new row inserted
10     2          109       4 #index in list x
11     2          110       4
12     3          111       5
13     3          112       5 
14     3          113       5 #new row inserted
15     3          113       6 #index in list x

The code I have been trying:

 m = df.index       #storing the indices of the df
 #m

 for i in m:
     if i in x:     #x is the given list of indices
         df.iloc[i-1]["identifier"] = df.iloc[i]["identifier"]
         df.iloc[i-1]["values"] = df.iloc[i]["values"]
         df.iloc[i-1]["subid"] = (df.iloc[i]["subid"]-1)
 df

The above code is simply replacing the rows at (i-1) indices and not inserting the additional rows with the above values. Please help.

Please let me know if anything is unclear.

Answer 1

Preserving the index order is the tricky part. I'm not sure this is the most efficient way to do this, but it should work.

x = [2,8,12]
rows = []
cur = {}

for i in df.index:
    if i in x:
        cur['index'] = i
        cur['identifier'] = df.iloc[i].identifier
        cur['values'] = df.iloc[i]['values']
        cur['subid'] = df.iloc[i].subid - 1
        rows.append(cur)
        cur = {}

Then, iterate through the new rows list, and perform an incremental concat, inserting each new row into the correct spot.

offset = 0; #tracks the number of rows already inserted to ensure rows are inserted in the correct position

for d in rows:
    df = pd.concat([df.head(d['index'] + offset), pd.DataFrame([d]), df.tail(len(df) - (d['index']+offset))])
    offset+=1


df.reset_index(inplace=True)
df.drop('index', axis=1, inplace=True)
df

    level_0 identifier  subid   values
0         0          1      1      101
1         1          1      1      102
2         0          1      1      103
3         2          1      2      103
4         3          1      2      104
5         4          1      2      105
6         5          2      3      106
7         6          2      3      107
8         7          2      3      108
9         0          2      3      109
10        8          2      4      109
11        9          2      4      110
12       10          3      5      111
13       11          3      5      112
14        0          3      5      113
15       12          3      6      113