Replicating Jupyter Notebook Pandas dataframe HTML printout

I've made a few changes to your code to get the functionality you want:

  • Pandas dataframes are styled with two special HTML tags for tables, namely thead for the header and tbody for the body. We can use this to specify the highlighting behavior as body-only
  • CSS has "even" and "odd" properties which you can use to add shading effects to tables.
  • In order for hover to work with the background shading specified, it must be called last not first

In Jupyter Notebook:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from IPython.display import HTML

def hover(hover_color="#add8e6"):
    return dict(selector="tbody tr:hover",
            props=[("background-color", "%s" % hover_color)])

styles = [
    #table properties
    dict(selector=" ", 
         props=[("margin","0"),
                ("font-family",'"Helvetica", "Arial", sans-serif'),
                ("border-collapse", "collapse"),
                ("border","none"),
                ("border", "2px solid #ccf")
                   ]),

    #header color - optional
    dict(selector="thead", 
         props=[("background-color","#cc8484")
               ]),

    #background shading
    dict(selector="tbody tr:nth-child(even)",
         props=[("background-color", "#fff")]),
    dict(selector="tbody tr:nth-child(odd)",
         props=[("background-color", "#eee")]),

    #cell spacing
    dict(selector="td", 
         props=[("padding", ".5em")]),

    #header cell properties
    dict(selector="th", 
         props=[("font-size", "125%"),
                ("text-align", "center")]),

    #caption placement
    dict(selector="caption", 
         props=[("caption-side", "bottom")]),

    #render hover last to override background-color
    hover()
]
html = (df.style.set_table_styles(styles)
      .set_caption("Hover to highlight."))
html

Jupyter output

...but is it still beautiful when we output the HTML file?? Yes. You can do some more CSS styling to get it just right (font-size, font-family, text-decoration, margin/padding, etc) but this gives you a start. See below:

print(html.render())

<style  type="text/css" >
    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc   {
          margin: 0;
          font-family: "Helvetica", "Arial", sans-serif;
          border-collapse: collapse;
          border: none;
          border: 2px solid #ccf;
    }    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc thead {
          background-color: #cc8484;
    }    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc tbody tr:nth-child(even) {
          background-color: #fff;
    }    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc tbody tr:nth-child(odd) {
          background-color: #eee;
    }    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc td {
          padding: .5em;
    }    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc th {
          font-size: 125%;
          text-align: center;
    }    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc caption {
          caption-side: bottom;
    }    #T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc tbody tr:hover {
          background-color: #add8e6;
    }</style>  
<table id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fc" ><caption>Hover to highlight.</caption> 
<thead>    <tr> 
        <th class="blank" ></th> 
        <th class="blank level0" ></th> 
        <th class="col_heading level0 col0" >0</th> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th class="index_name level0" >first</th> 
        <th class="index_name level1" >second</th> 
        <th class="blank" ></th> 
    </tr></thead> 
<tbody>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel0_row0" class="row_heading level0 row0" rowspan=2>bar</th> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row0" class="row_heading level1 row0" >one</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow0_col0" class="data row0 col0" >-0.130634</td> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row1" class="row_heading level1 row1" >two</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow1_col0" class="data row1 col0" >1.17685</td> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel0_row2" class="row_heading level0 row2" rowspan=2>baz</th> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row2" class="row_heading level1 row2" >one</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow2_col0" class="data row2 col0" >0.500367</td> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row3" class="row_heading level1 row3" >two</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow3_col0" class="data row3 col0" >0.555932</td> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel0_row4" class="row_heading level0 row4" rowspan=2>foo</th> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row4" class="row_heading level1 row4" >one</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow4_col0" class="data row4 col0" >-0.744553</td> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row5" class="row_heading level1 row5" >two</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow5_col0" class="data row5 col0" >-1.41269</td> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel0_row6" class="row_heading level0 row6" rowspan=2>qux</th> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row6" class="row_heading level1 row6" >one</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow6_col0" class="data row6 col0" >0.726728</td> 
    </tr>    <tr> 
        <th id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fclevel1_row7" class="row_heading level1 row7" >two</th> 
        <td id="T_3e73cfd2_396c_11e8_9d70_240a645b34fcrow7_col0" class="data row7 col0" >-0.683555</td> 
    </tr></tbody> 
</table>