Pandas: Pipe function

Pandas introduced pipe() starting from version 0.16.2. pipe() enables user-defined methods in method chains.

Instead of writing

# f(), g(), and h() are user-defined function
# df is a Pandas DataFrame
f(g(h(df), arg1=a), arg2=b, arg3=c)

we can write

(df.pipe(h).pipe(g, arg1=a).pipe(f, arg2=b, arg3=c))

Method chaining is a programmatic style of invoking multiple method calls sequentially with each call performing an action on the same object and returning it.

It eliminates the cognitive burden of naming variables at each intermediate step. Fluent Interface, a method of creating object-oriented API relies on method cascading (aka method chaining). This is akin to piping in Unix systems.

Via towards data science.