Character set detection is the process of determining the character set, or encoding, of character data in an unknown format.
A simple binding of ICU character set detection (http://userguide.icu-project.org/conversion/detection) for Node.js.
At first, install libicu
into your system (See this instruction for details).
After that, install node-icu-charset-detector
from npm.
npm install node-icu-charset-detector
-
Debian (Ubuntu)
apt-get install libicu-dev
-
Gentoo
emerge icu
-
Fedora/CentOS
yum install libicu-devel
-
MacPorts
port install icu +devel
-
Homebrew
brew install icu4c
brew link icu4c --force
If experiencing issues with 'homebrew' installing version 50.1 of icu4c, try the following:
brew search icu4c
brew tap homebrew/versions
brew versions icu4c
cd $(brew --prefix) && git pull --rebase
git checkout c25fd2f $(brew --prefix)/Library/Formula/icu4c.rb
brew install icu4c
- From source
curl -O http://download.icu-project.org/files/icu4c/52.1/icu4c-52_1-src.tgz
tar xzvf icu4c-4_4_2-src.tgz
cd icu/source
chmod +x runConfigureICU configure install-sh
./runConfigureICU MacOSX
make
sudo make install
xcode-select --install
node-icu-charset-detector
provides a function detectCharset(buffer)
, where buffer
is an instance of Buffer
whose charset should be detected.
var charsetDetector = require("node-icu-charset-detector");
var buffer = fs.readFileSync("/path/to/the/file");
var charset = charsetDetector.detectCharset(buffer);
console.log("charset name: " + charset.toString());
console.log("language: " + charset.language);
console.log("detection confidence: " + charset.confidence);
detectCharset(buffer)
returns the detected charset name for buffer
, and the returned charset name has two extra properties language
and confidence
:
charset.language
- language name for the detected character set.
charset.confidence
- confidence of the charset detection for
charset
.
- confidence of the charset detection for
Since ICU itself does not have a feature to convert character sets, you may need to use node-iconv
(https://github.com/bnoordhuis/node-iconv), which has a powerful character sets converting feature.
Here is a simple example to leverage node-iconv
to convert character sets not supported by Node itself.
function bufferToString(buffer) {
var charsetDetector = require("node-icu-charset-detector");
var charset = charsetDetector.detectCharset(buffer).toString();
try {
return buffer.toString(charset);
} catch (x) {
var Iconv = require("iconv").Iconv;
var charsetConverter = new Iconv(charset, "utf8");
return charsetConverter.convert(buffer).toString();
}
}
var buffer = fs.readFileSync("/path/to/the/file");
var bufferString = bufferToString(buffer);