HDFStore.select_column error reporting

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.23.0.txt

@@ -1111,6 +1111,7 @@ I/O
 - Bug in :meth:`pandas.io.json.json_normalize` where subrecords are not properly normalized if any subrecords values are NoneType (:issue:`20030`)
 - Bug in ``usecols`` parameter in :func:`pandas.io.read_csv` and :func:`pandas.io.read_table` where error is not raised correctly when passing a string. (:issue:`20529`)
 - Bug in :func:`HDFStore.keys` when reading a file with a softlink causes exception (:issue:`20523`)
+- Bug in :func:`HDFStore.select_column` where a key which is not a valid store raised an ``AttributeError`` instead of a ``KeyError`` (:issue:`17912`)
 
 Plotting
 ^^^^^^^^

pandas/io/pytables.py

@@ -887,7 +887,10 @@ def remove(self, key, where=None, start=None, stop=None):
         where = _ensure_term(where, scope_level=1)
         try:
             s = self.get_storer(key)
-        except:
+        except KeyError:
+            # the key is not a valid store, re-raising KeyError
+            raise
+        except Exception:
 
             if where is not None:
                 raise ValueError(
@@ -899,9 +902,6 @@ def remove(self, key, where=None, start=None, stop=None):
                 s._f_remove(recursive=True)
                 return None
 
-        if s is None:
-            raise KeyError('No object named %s in the file' % key)
-
         # remove the node
         if com._all_none(where, start, stop):
             s.group._f_remove(recursive=True)
@@ -1094,7 +1094,8 @@ def get_storer(self, key):
         """ return the storer object for a key, raise if not in the file """
         group = self.get_node(key)
         if group is None:
-            return None
+            raise KeyError('No object named {} in the file'.format(key))
+
         s = self._create_storer(group)
         s.infer_axes()
         return s

pandas/tests/io/test_pytables.py

@@ -3836,8 +3836,15 @@ def test_read_column(self):
 
         with ensure_clean_store(self.path) as store:
             _maybe_remove(store, 'df')
-            store.append('df', df)
 
+            # GH 17912
+            # HDFStore.select_column should raise a KeyError
+            # exception if the key is not a valid store
+            with pytest.raises(KeyError,
+                               message='No object named index in the file'):
+                store.select_column('df', 'index')
+
+            store.append('df', df)
             # error
             pytest.raises(KeyError, store.select_column, 'df', 'foo')