An implementation of HIVE's explode function in pandas

pandas-explode.py

def explode(df, by_column, new_col_name):
    rows = []

    for row in df.itertuples():
        for value in getattr(row, by_column):
            rows.append({
                new_col_name: value,
                **{
                    key: getattr(row, key)
                    for key in row._fields
                    if key not in ['Index', by_column]
                }
            })

    return pd.DataFrame(rows)