Configurable json_normalize with respect to number of levels and Keys to be flattened

Code Sample, a copy-pastable example if possible

data = [{"CreatedBy":{"Name": "User001"}, 
        "Lookup":{"TextField":"Some text", "UserField":{"Id":"ID001", "Name": "Name001"}},
        "Image":{"a":"b"}}]
json_normalize(data).to_json(orient="records")

Current Output

[{"CreatedBy.Name":"User001","Image.a":"b",
"Lookup.TextField":"Some text",
"Lookup.UserField.Id":"ID001","Lookup.UserField.Name":"Name001"}]

Problem description

I want to flatten only specific keys and up to a specific a specific level. For eg., I want to flatten until level 1 and skip key image.

Expected Output

[{"CreatedBy.Name":"User001",
"Image:{a":"b}",
"Lookup.TextField":"Some text",
"Lookup.UserField":{Id":"ID001",
"Name":"Name001"}]

Output of pd.show_versions()

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit: None pandas: 0.23.4 pytest: None pip: 18.1 setuptools: 39.1.0 Cython: None numpy: 1.15.1 scipy: None pyarrow: None xarray: None IPython: None sphinx: None patsy: None dateutil: 2.7.3 pytz: 2018.4 blosc: None bottleneck: None tables: None numexpr: None feather: None matplotlib: 3.0.0 openpyxl: None xlrd: None xlwt: None xlsxwriter: None lxml: None bs4: None html5lib: None sqlalchemy: None pymysql: None psycopg2: None jinja2: 2.10 s3fs: None fastparquet: None pandas_gbq: None pandas_datareader: None

[bhavaniravi]

@WillAyd I am a bit confused with the behavior ofjson_normalize method with records_path. While just passing a list of records flattens the dictionary, it doesn’t flattens the same on sending records_path param. Is it the excepted behavior?

data = [{'CreatedBy': {'Name': 'User001'},
             'Lookup': [{'TextField': 'Some text',
                                'UserField': {'Id': 'ID001', 'Name': 'Name001'}},
                              {'TextField': 'Some text',
                               'UserField': {'Id': 'ID001', 'Name': 'Name001'}}
                        ],
            'Image': {'a': 'b'}
        }]

json_normalize(data, record_path=["Lookup"])

Current Output

   TextField                           UserField
0  Some text  {'Id': 'ID001', 'Name': 'Name001'}
1  Some text  {'Id': 'ID001', 'Name': 'Name001'}

Expected Output

   TextField              UserField.Id       Name
0  Some text               ID001             Name001
1  Some text               ID001             Name001

[bhavaniravi]

okay, will create another one.