> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.clickml.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Categorical Encoding component

> Convert categorical columns into numerical values using label encoding, one-hot encoding, ordinal encoding, and target encoding strategies.

The **Encoding** component transforms categorical text columns into numbers so ML models can work with them.

## Configuration

| Option       | Description                          |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------ |
| **Method**   | Encoding strategy (see table below). |
| **Features** | Categorical columns to encode.       |

### Methods

| Method           | How it works                                                                                            | Best for                                                     |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Ordinal Encoding | Assigns an integer (0, 1, 2, …) to each category. Preserves order if categories have a natural ranking. | Ordinal categories (e.g. Low / Medium / High)                |
| One Hot Encoding | Creates a new binary column for each unique category value.                                             | Nominal categories with no inherent order (e.g. Color, City) |

## Input / Output

|        | Type      |
| ------ | --------- |
| Input  | DataFrame |
| Output | DataFrame |

<Warning>
  One Hot Encoding expands the number of columns. For columns with many unique values (high cardinality), this can make the DataFrame very wide. Consider Feature Selection afterward.
</Warning>