Label encoding across multiple columns in scikit-learn

Question

I\'m trying to use scikit-learn\'s LabelEncoder to encode a pandas DataFrame of string labels. As the dataframe has many (50+) columns, I want to a

Answer 1

Following up on the comments raised on the solution of @PriceHardman I would propose the following version of the class:

class LabelEncodingColoumns(BaseEstimator, TransformerMixin):
def __init__(self, cols=None):
    pdu._is_cols_input_valid(cols)
    self.cols = cols
    self.les = {col: LabelEncoder() for col in cols}
    self._is_fitted = False

def transform(self, df, **transform_params):
    """
    Scaling ``cols`` of ``df`` using the fitting

    Parameters
    ----------
    df : DataFrame
        DataFrame to be preprocessed
    """
    if not self._is_fitted:
        raise NotFittedError("Fitting was not preformed")
    pdu._is_cols_subset_of_df_cols(self.cols, df)

    df = df.copy()

    label_enc_dict = {}
    for col in self.cols:
        label_enc_dict[col] = self.les[col].transform(df[col])

    labelenc_cols = pd.DataFrame(label_enc_dict,
        # The index of the resulting DataFrame should be assigned and
        # equal to the one of the original DataFrame. Otherwise, upon
        # concatenation NaNs will be introduced.
        index=df.index
    )

    for col in self.cols:
        df[col] = labelenc_cols[col]
    return df

def fit(self, df, y=None, **fit_params):
    """
    Fitting the preprocessing

    Parameters
    ----------
    df : DataFrame
        Data to use for fitting.
        In many cases, should be ``X_train``.
    """
    pdu._is_cols_subset_of_df_cols(self.cols, df)
    for col in self.cols:
        self.les[col].fit(df[col])
    self._is_fitted = True
    return self

This class fits the encoder on the training set and uses the fitted version when transforming. Initial version of the code can be found here.