ValueError: DataFrame constructor not properly called

I am trying to create a dataframe with Python, which works fine with the following command:

df_test2 = DataFrame(index = idx, data=(["-54350","2016-06-25T10:29:57.340Z","2016-06-25T10:29:57.340Z"]))

but, when I try to get the data from a variable instead of hard-coding it into the data argument; eg. :

r6 = ["-54350", "2016-06-25T10:29:57.340Z", "2016-06-25T10:29:57.340Z"]
df_test2 = DataFrame(index = idx, data=(r6))

I expect this is the same and it should work? But I get:

ValueError: DataFrame constructor not properly called!

Answer

Reason for the error:

It seems a string representation isn’t satisfying enough for the DataFrame constructor

Fix/Solutions:

import ast
# convert the string representation to a dict
dict = ast.literal_eval(r6) 
# and use it as the input
df_test2 = DataFrame(index = idx, data=(dict)) 

which will solve the error.