DOC: description of record_prefix param for json_normalize is wrong

[wjandrea]

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that the issue still exists on the latest versions of the docs on main here

Location of the documentation

https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/dev/reference/api/pandas.json_normalize.html

pandas/pandas/io/json/_normalize.py

Lines 270 to 272 in 3d7a44a

	record_prefix : str, default None
	If True, prefix records with dotted (?) path, e.g. foo.bar.field if
	path to records is ['foo', 'bar'].

Documentation problem

The description implies record_prefix is taken as a boolean, but as said above, it's actually a string. There's an example below that shows how it actually behaves:

pandas/pandas/io/json/_normalize.py

Lines 377 to 383 in 3d7a44a

	>>> data = {"A": [1, 2]}
	>>> pd.json_normalize(data, "A", record_prefix="Prefix.")
	Prefix.0
	0 1
	1 2
	Returns normalized data with columns prefixed with the given string.

Suggested fix for documentation

I might suggest:

record_prefix : str, default None
If provided, prefix records with this string, e.g. foo.bar.field if record_prefix is 'foo.bar.'.

---

BTW, I think meta_prefix also has the same problem, but I don't have an example to test it on.

[luke396]

take