How to get document type information and file extension in Python

Sometimes really bad things happen in the life of a file, things that leave it stripped of its identity, or even with the wrong extension entirely. This can be very inconvenient, causing all sorts of different problems. Having a good way to sort out which extension is correct for each file can bulletproof your app or website from coughing up error messages. So how can we perform this identification process without wasting a ton of our precious time? Let me show you.

To make life very easy, we shall use an API for the task at hand. You may install its client like so:

pip install cloudmersive-convert-api-client

Proceeding along, we have our function call next:

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.ConvertDocumentApi(cloudmersive_convert_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
input_file = '/path/to/file' # file | Input file to perform the operation on.
try:
# Get document type information
api_response = api_instance.convert_document_autodetect_get_info(input_file)
pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
print("Exception when calling ConvertDocumentApi->convert_document_autodetect_get_info: %s\n" % e)

As you can see, after the API instance is created, it’s just a matter of giving our file path and sending in the call. A few seconds later and we have our file extension. Problem solved!

Nobody’s got time to deal with extensionless files!