Add more specific error message when user passes incorrect matrix format to from_coo

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.25.0.rst

@@ -590,7 +590,7 @@ Sparse
 - Significant speedup in :class:`SparseArray` initialization that benefits most operations, fixing performance regression introduced in v0.20.0 (:issue:`24985`)
 - Bug in :class:`SparseFrame` constructor where passing ``None`` as the data would cause ``default_fill_value`` to be ignored (:issue:`16807`)
 - Bug in :class:`SparseDataFrame` when adding a column in which the length of values does not match length of index, ``AssertionError`` is raised instead of raising ``ValueError`` (:issue:`25484`)
-
+- Introduce a more specific error message in :class:`SparseAccessor` so user knows when they provide the incorrect matrix format to `from_coo` (:issue:`26554`)
 
 Other
 ^^^^^

pandas/core/arrays/sparse.py

@@ -2014,11 +2014,15 @@ def from_coo(cls, A, dense_index=False):
         from pandas.core.sparse.scipy_sparse import _coo_to_sparse_series
         from pandas import Series
 
-        result = _coo_to_sparse_series(A, dense_index=dense_index,
-                                       sparse_series=False)
-        result = Series(result.array, index=result.index, copy=False)
+        try:
+            result = _coo_to_sparse_series(A, dense_index=dense_index,
+                                           sparse_series=False)
+            result = Series(result.array, index=result.index, copy=False)
 
-        return result
+            return result
+
+        except AttributeError:
+            raise AttributeError('Expected coo matrix format.')
 
     def to_coo(self, row_levels=(0, ), column_levels=(1, ), sort_labels=False):
         """

pandas/tests/arrays/sparse/test_accessor.py

@@ -119,3 +119,10 @@ def test_series_from_coo(self, dtype, dense_index):
             )
 
         tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
+
+    @td.skip_if_no_scipy
+    def test_series_from_coo_incorrect_format(self):
+        import scipy.sparse
+        m = scipy.sparse.csr_matrix(np.array([[0, 1], [0, 0]]))
+        with pytest.raises(AttributeError):
+            pd.Series.sparse.from_coo(m)

pandas/tests/arrays/sparse/test_array.py

@@ -1128,6 +1128,13 @@ def test_from_coo(self):
         expected = pd.Series([4, 9, 7, 5], index=index, dtype='Sparse[int]')
         tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
 
+    @td.skip_if_no_scipy
+    def test_from_coo_invalid_input(self):
+        import scipy.sparse
+        m = scipy.sparse.csr_matrix(np.array([[0, 1], [0, 0]]))
+        with pytest.raises(AttributeError):
+            pd.Series.sparse.from_coo(m)
+
     @td.skip_if_no_scipy
     def test_to_coo(self):
         import scipy.sparse