BUG: Error upon Series.Groupby.nunique with empty Series (#12553)

Modified tests

simplify tests

Add whatsnew

Author: mroeschke

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.19.2.txt

@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ Bug Fixes
 - Bug in resampling a ``DatetimeIndex`` in local TZ, covering a DST change, which would raise ``AmbiguousTimeError`` (:issue:`14682`)
 
 
-
+- Bug in ``Series.groupby.nunique()`` raising an ``IndexError`` for an empty ``Series`` (:issue:`12553`)
 
 
 

pandas/core/groupby.py

@@ -2898,6 +2898,10 @@ def true_and_notnull(x, *args, **kwargs):
     def nunique(self, dropna=True):
         """ Returns number of unique elements in the group """
         ids, _, _ = self.grouper.group_info
+
+        if len(ids) == 0:
+            return Series(index=self.dtype.index, name=self.name)
+
         val = self.obj.get_values()
 
         try:

pandas/tests/test_groupby.py

@@ -6754,6 +6754,13 @@ def test_nunique_with_object(self):
         expected = pd.Series([1] * 5, name='name', index=index)
         tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
 
+    def test_nunique_with_empty_series(self):
+        # GH 12553
+        data = pd.Series(name='name')
+        result = data.groupby(level=0).nunique()
+        expected = pd.Series(name='name')
+        tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
+
     def test_transform_with_non_scalar_group(self):
         # GH 10165
         cols = pd.MultiIndex.from_tuples([