# Encode Values

Encodes values in a column through a variety of methods:

Label Encoding: Encode target labels with value between 0 and n\_classes-1. See scikit-learn's [LabelEncoder](https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.preprocessing.LabelEncoder.html#sklearn.preprocessing.LabelEncoder) for full documentation.

Target Encoding: Encode a categorical column with the average value of a target column for the corresponding value of the categorical column. See scikit-learn's [TargetEncoder](https://contrib.scikit-learn.org/category_encoders/targetencoder.html) for full documentation.

One Hot Encoding: Encode a categorical column as a 0 or 1 for each possible category, each of which will be it's own row.

## Parameters

| Name   | Type   | Description                                                                    | Is Optional |
| ------ | ------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------- |
| method | string | Encoding method which will be used ('label', 'target', or 'oh')                |             |
| column | column | Column name to label encode                                                    |             |
| target | column | Required if method = 'target'. Numeric target column to use to create averages | True        |

## Example

```python
ds = rasgo.get.dataset(id)

ds2 = ds.label_encode(column='WEATHER_DESCRIPTION', method='oh')
ds2.preview()

ds3 = ds.target_encode(column='WEATHER_DESCRIPTION', target='DAILY_HIGH_TEMP')
ds3.preview()
```

## Source Code

{% embed url="<https://github.com/rasgointelligence/RasgoTransforms/blob/main/rasgotransforms/rasgotransforms/transforms/encode_values/snowflake/encode_values.sql>" %}