Is there a way to copy only the structure (not the data) of a Pandas DataFrame?

In version 0.18 of pandas, the DataFrame constructor has no options for creating a dataframe like another dataframe with NaN instead of the values.

The code you use df2 = pd.DataFrame(columns=df1.columns, index=df1.index) is the most logical way, the only way to improve on it is to spell out even more what you are doing is to add data=None, so that other coders directly see that you intentionally leave out the data from this new DataFrame you are creating.

TLDR: So my suggestion is:

Explicit is better than implicit

df2 = pd.DataFrame(data=None, columns=df1.columns, index=df1.index)

Very much like yours, but more spelled out.

That's a job for reindex_like. Start with the original:

df1 = pd.DataFrame([[11, 12], [21, 22]], columns=['c1', 'c2'], index=['i1', 'i2'])

Construct an empty DataFrame and reindex it like df1:

pd.DataFrame().reindex_like(df1)
Out: 
    c1  c2
i1 NaN NaN
i2 NaN NaN   

Not exactly answering this question, but a similar one for people coming here via a search engine

My case was creating a copy of the data frame without data and without index. One can achieve this by doing the following. This will maintain the dtypes of the columns.

empty_copy = df.drop(df.index)