`sklearn.preprocessing`.OneHotEncoder¶

class sklearn.preprocessing.OneHotEncoder(*, categories='auto', drop=None, sparse='deprecated', sparse_output=True, dtype=<class 'numpy.float64'>, handle_unknown='error', min_frequency=None, max_categories=None)[source]¶

Encode categorical features as a one-hot numeric array.

The input to this transformer should be an array-like of integers or strings, denoting the values taken on by categorical (discrete) features. The features are encoded using a one-hot (aka ‘one-of-K’ or ‘dummy’) encoding scheme. This creates a binary column for each category and returns a sparse matrix or dense array (depending on the sparse_output parameter)

By default, the encoder derives the categories based on the unique values in each feature. Alternatively, you can also specify the categories manually.

This encoding is needed for feeding categorical data to many scikit-learn estimators, notably linear models and SVMs with the standard kernels.

Note: a one-hot encoding of y labels should use a LabelBinarizer instead.

See also

OrdinalEncoder: Performs an ordinal (integer) encoding of the categorical features.
sklearn.feature_extraction.DictVectorizer: Performs a one-hot encoding of dictionary items (also handles string-valued features).
sklearn.feature_extraction.FeatureHasher: Performs an approximate one-hot encoding of dictionary items or strings.
LabelBinarizer: Binarizes labels in a one-vs-all fashion.
MultiLabelBinarizer: Transforms between iterable of iterables and a multilabel format, e.g. a (samples x classes) binary matrix indicating the presence of a class label.

Examples

Given a dataset with two features, we let the encoder find the unique values per feature and transform the data to a binary one-hot encoding.

>>> from sklearn.preprocessing import OneHotEncoder

One can discard categories not seen during fit:

>>> enc = OneHotEncoder(handle_unknown='ignore')
>>> X = [['Male', 1], ['Female', 3], ['Female', 2]]
>>> enc.fit(X)
OneHotEncoder(handle_unknown='ignore')
>>> enc.categories_
[array(['Female', 'Male'], dtype=object), array([1, 2, 3], dtype=object)]
>>> enc.transform([['Female', 1], ['Male', 4]]).toarray()
array([[1., 0., 1., 0., 0.],
       [0., 1., 0., 0., 0.]])
>>> enc.inverse_transform([[0, 1, 1, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 1, 0]])
array([['Male', 1],
       [None, 2]], dtype=object)
>>> enc.get_feature_names_out(['gender', 'group'])
array(['gender_Female', 'gender_Male', 'group_1', 'group_2', 'group_3'], ...)

One can always drop the first column for each feature:

>>> drop_enc = OneHotEncoder(drop='first').fit(X)
>>> drop_enc.categories_
[array(['Female', 'Male'], dtype=object), array([1, 2, 3], dtype=object)]
>>> drop_enc.transform([['Female', 1], ['Male', 2]]).toarray()
array([[0., 0., 0.],
       [1., 1., 0.]])

Or drop a column for feature only having 2 categories:

>>> drop_binary_enc = OneHotEncoder(drop='if_binary').fit(X)
>>> drop_binary_enc.transform([['Female', 1], ['Male', 2]]).toarray()
array([[0., 1., 0., 0.],
       [1., 0., 1., 0.]])

Infrequent categories are enabled by setting max_categories or min_frequency.

>>> import numpy as np
>>> X = np.array([["a"] * 5 + ["b"] * 20 + ["c"] * 10 + ["d"] * 3], dtype=object).T
>>> ohe = OneHotEncoder(max_categories=3, sparse_output=False).fit(X)
>>> ohe.infrequent_categories_
[array(['a', 'd'], dtype=object)]
>>> ohe.transform([["a"], ["b"]])
array([[0., 0., 1.],
       [1., 0., 0.]])

Methods

`fit`(X[, y])	Fit OneHotEncoder to X.
`fit_transform`(X[, y])	Fit to data, then transform it.
`get_feature_names_out`([input_features])	Get output feature names for transformation.
`get_params`([deep])	Get parameters for this estimator.
`inverse_transform`(X)	Convert the data back to the original representation.
`set_output`(*[, transform])	Set output container.
`set_params`(**params)	Set the parameters of this estimator.
`transform`(X)	Transform X using one-hot encoding.

fit(X, y=None)[source]¶

Fit OneHotEncoder to X.

Parameters:

Xarray-like of shape (n_samples, n_features): The data to determine the categories of each feature.
yNone: Ignored. This parameter exists only for compatibility with Pipeline.

Returns:

self: Fitted encoder.

fit_transform(X, y=None, **fit_params)[source]¶

Fit to data, then transform it.

Fits transformer to X and y with optional parameters fit_params and returns a transformed version of X.

Parameters:

Xarray-like of shape (n_samples, n_features): Input samples.
yarray-like of shape (n_samples,) or (n_samples, n_outputs), default=None: Target values (None for unsupervised transformations).
**fit_paramsdict: Additional fit parameters.

Returns:

X_newndarray array of shape (n_samples, n_features_new): Transformed array.

get_feature_names_out(input_features=None)[source]¶

Get output feature names for transformation.

Parameters:

input_featuresarray-like of str or None, default=None

Input features.

If input_features is None, then feature_names_in_ is used as feature names in. If feature_names_in_ is not defined, then the following input feature names are generated: ["x0", "x1", ..., "x(n_features_in_ - 1)"].
If input_features is an array-like, then input_features must match feature_names_in_ if feature_names_in_ is defined.

Returns:

feature_names_outndarray of str objects: Transformed feature names.

get_params(deep=True)[source]¶

Get parameters for this estimator.

Parameters:

deepbool, default=True: If True, will return the parameters for this estimator and contained subobjects that are estimators.

Returns:

paramsdict: Parameter names mapped to their values.

property infrequent_categories_¶: Infrequent categories for each feature.

inverse_transform(X)[source]¶

Convert the data back to the original representation.

When unknown categories are encountered (all zeros in the one-hot encoding), None is used to represent this category. If the feature with the unknown category has a dropped category, the dropped category will be its inverse.

For a given input feature, if there is an infrequent category, ‘infrequent_sklearn’ will be used to represent the infrequent category.

Parameters:

X{array-like, sparse matrix} of shape (n_samples, n_encoded_features): The transformed data.

Returns:

X_trndarray of shape (n_samples, n_features): Inverse transformed array.

set_output(*, transform=None)[source]¶

Set output container.

See Introducing the set_output API for an example on how to use the API.

Parameters:

transform{“default”, “pandas”}, default=None

Configure output of transform and fit_transform.

"default": Default output format of a transformer
"pandas": DataFrame output
None: Transform configuration is unchanged

Returns:

selfestimator instance: Estimator instance.

set_params(**params)[source]¶

Set the parameters of this estimator.

The method works on simple estimators as well as on nested objects (such as Pipeline). The latter have parameters of the form <component>__<parameter> so that it’s possible to update each component of a nested object.

Parameters:

**paramsdict: Estimator parameters.

Returns:

selfestimator instance: Estimator instance.

transform(X)[source]¶

Transform X using one-hot encoding.

If there are infrequent categories for a feature, the infrequent categories will be grouped into a single category.

Parameters:

Xarray-like of shape (n_samples, n_features): The data to encode.

Returns:

X_out{ndarray, sparse matrix} of shape (n_samples, n_encoded_features): Transformed input. If sparse_output=True, a sparse matrix will be returned.