How to detect the Text Encoding of a File in Python

Knowing the text encoding for a given file is an important step in its processing. So how can we differentiate between ASCII, UTF7, UTF8, UTF16, UTF32, and BigEndianUnicode? Well, we could spend all afternoon (and probably evening as well) working on the problem. Or we could just use an API.

Pip install the client with this command here.

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Now for our function call. To use edit_text_text_encoding_detect, we will first create a new API instance. Here’s how that works:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_convert_api_client
from cloudmersive_convert_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint
# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
# Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed
# configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer'
# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_convert_api_client.EditTextApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
input_file = '/path/to/file' # file | Input file to perform the operation on.
try:
# Detect text encoding of file
api_response = api_instance.edit_text_text_encoding_detect(input_file)
pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
print("Exception when calling EditTextApi->edit_text_text_encoding_detect: %s\n" % e)

And there you have it. Your return will be the name of the text encoding, simple as that.