Merging dataframes on index with pandas

You should be able to use join, which joins on the index as default. Given your desired result, you must use outer as the join type.

>>> df1.join(df2, how='outer')
            V1  V2
A 1/1/2012  12  15
  2/1/2012  14 NaN
  3/1/2012 NaN  21
B 1/1/2012  15  24
  2/1/2012   8   9
C 1/1/2012  17 NaN
  2/1/2012   9 NaN
D 1/1/2012 NaN   7
  2/1/2012 NaN  16

Signature: _.join(other, on=None, how=’left’, lsuffix=”, rsuffix=”, sort=False) Docstring: Join columns with other DataFrame either on index or on a key column. Efficiently Join multiple DataFrame objects by index at once by passing a list.