FileInfo

FileInfo detects file encodings and MIME types using the wonderful Unix file command.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'fileinfo'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install fileinfo

Usage

Detect encoding

Use FileInfo.parse with a string or FileInfo.load with a filename.

FileInfo.parse('foo bar baz').encoding # => #<Encoding:US-ASCII>
FileInfo.parse('föø bår bàz').encoding # => #<Encoding:UTF-8>

filename = '/Users/rafbm/Downloads/some_crap_coming_from_windows.csv'
FileInfo.load(filename).encoding # => #<Encoding:ISO-8859-1>

Detect MIME type

A bunch of methods are available depending on your needs.

info = FileInfo.load('picture.jpg')
info.type       # => "image/jpeg"
info.media_type # => "image"
info.sub_type   # => "jpeg"

The #mime_type method can also return a MIME::Type instance.

info = FileInfo.parse('Hello world')
info.mime_type # => #<MIME::Type:0x007f81a1a36090 @content_type="text/plain" ...>

NOTE: You must install the mime-types gem yourself as it is not a dependency of fileinfo.

Finally, #content_type can be used to get the full string returned by file --mime --brief.

info = FileInfo.parse('Hëllø wõrld')
info.content_type # => "text/plain; charset=utf-8"

Contributing