Rasterize vector based on list values in Google Earth Engine

Question

I would like to convert polygon (as featurecollection) that has the attribute 'Name' which contains string value of plantation types, namely 'Rubber', 'Mango', 'Coffee'. However, the .reduceToImage function won't accept string values. Thus, I had to do some workaround by deriving unique numeric id but now I'm stuck.

// Workflow: 1) Import asset, plantation_trial1
// print(plantations);
print(plantations.aggregate_array("Name"));


var plant_field = 'Name'
var all_text = 'what is'
// Function to build states list
var build_select = function(feature_collection, field_name) {
  var field_list = ee.Dictionary(feature_collection.aggregate_histogram(field_name))
                     .keys();
  return field_list.map(function(name) {
    return ee.Dictionary({'label': name})
  }).getInfo();
};
var plant_list = build_select(plantations, plant_field);

print(plant_list);

The 'plant_list' already contains the unique id for each 'Name', but no array or list function worked with the object. So basically, I am trying to have the script automate the extraction of the unique names from the featureCollection and assign each with a unique id. I am also aware that there may be some more efficient alternatives to achieve this, like distinct. Currently, here is what I got from print():

Can anyone give any idea on identifying what object that I have here and what to do with it, please?

Answer 1

Here is a toy demonstration of adding an integer class ID property to each feature that corresponds to a particular string based class ID.

The lookup table that ties class name ID to integer ID is created programmatically, so the assignment of integer to class name is somewhat arbitrary. If you would like to explicitly assign integer IDs to class name IDs, then manually construct an ee.Dictionary where keys are class names and values are the integer you'd like associated with each class name.

Use the resulting 'NameCode' integer class ID property of the features in the collection to reduceToImage().

// Mock up feature collection with 'Name' property.
var ftCol = ee.FeatureCollection([
  ee.Feature(null, {'Name': 'Rubber'}),
  ee.Feature(null, {'Name': 'Mango'}),
  ee.Feature(null, {'Name': 'Coffee'})
]);

// Get a list of unique class names.
var distinctClassNames = ee.List(ftCol.aggregate_array('Name')).distinct();

// Make a sequential list of integers with length equal to n classes.
var distinctClassCodes = ee.List.sequence(1, distinctClassNames.size());

// Make a lookup table that maps unique 'Name' entries to an integer code value.
var lookup = ee.Dictionary.fromLists(distinctClassNames, distinctClassCodes);

// Print the lookup table so you know how class name corresponds to integer IDs.
print('Lookup table', lookup);

// Define a function to add the integer code value as a property of each
// feature based on the given 'Name' property.
function addNameCode(feature) {
  var thisClassName = feature.get('Name');
  return feature.set('NameCode', lookup.get(thisClassName));
}

// Apply the addNameCode function to the feature collection.
ftCol = ftCol.map(addNameCode);

print(ftCol);