# python-magic
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python-magic is a python interface to the libmagic file type
identification library.  libmagic identifies file types by checking
their headers according to a predefined list of file types. This
functionality is exposed to the command line by the Unix command
`file`.

## Usage

```python
>>> import magic
>>> magic.from_file("testdata/test.pdf")
'PDF document, version 1.2'
>>> magic.from_buffer(open("testdata/test.pdf").read(1024))
'PDF document, version 1.2'
>>> magic.from_file("testdata/test.pdf", mime=True)
'application/pdf'
```

There is also a `Magic` class that provides more direct control,
including overriding the magic database file and turning on character
encoding detection.  This is not recommended for general use.  In
particular, it's not safe for sharing across multiple threads and
will fail throw if this is attempted.

```python
>>> f = magic.Magic(uncompress=True)
>>> f.from_file('testdata/test.gz')
'ASCII text (gzip compressed data, was "test", last modified: Sat Jun 28
21:32:52 2008, from Unix)'
```

You can also combine the flag options:

```python
>>> f = magic.Magic(mime=True, uncompress=True)
>>> f.from_file('testdata/test.gz')
'text/plain'
```

## Versioning

Minor version bumps should be backwards compatible.  Major bumps are not.

## Compatibility

There are, sadly, 3 libraries using the package name `magic`.  The others are:

1. libmagic itself distributes a `magic` python module with a somewhat
different API.  python-magic includes a copy of this module to avoid
unnessary breakage when both versions are installed.  Maybe someday
they will converge.

2. python-libmagic also uses the same module name, and has a similar
but not identical API.  If you run into errors about "magic.h" not
being present, you should uninstall python-libmagic.

## Installation

The current stable version of python-magic is available on pypi and
can be installed by running `pip install python-magic`.

Other sources:

- pypi: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-magic/
- github: https://github.com/ahupp/python-magic

### Windows

You'll need DLLs for libmagic.  @julian-r has uploaded a version of this project that includes binaries to pypi:
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-magic-bin/0.4.14

Other sources of the libraries in the past have been [File for Windows](http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/file.htm) .  You will need to copy the file `magic` out of `[binary-zip]\share\misc`, and pass its location to `Magic(magic_file=...)`.

If you are using a 64-bit build of python, you'll need 64-bit libmagic binaries which can be found here: https://github.com/pidydx/libmagicwin64. Newer version can be found here: https://github.com/nscaife/file-windows.



### OSX

- When using Homebrew: `brew install libmagic`
- When using macports: `port install file`

### Troubleshooting

- 'MagicException: could not find any magic files!': some
  installations of libmagic do not correctly point to their magic
  database file.  Try specifying the path to the file explicitly in the
  constructor: `magic.Magic(magic_file="path_to_magic_file")`.

- 'WindowsError: [Error 193] %1 is not a valid Win32 application':
  Attempting to run the 32-bit libmagic DLL in a 64-bit build of
  python will fail with this error.  Here are 64-bit builds of libmagic for windows: https://github.com/pidydx/libmagicwin64

- 'WindowsError: exception: access violation writing 0x00000000 ' This may indicate you are mixing
  Windows Python and Cygwin Python. Make sure your libmagic and python builds are consistent.

## Author

Written by Adam Hupp in 2001 for a project that never got off the
ground.  It originally used SWIG for the C library bindings, but
switched to ctypes once that was part of the python standard library.

You can contact me via my [website](http://hupp.org/adam) or
[github](http://github.com/ahupp).

## Contributors

Thanks to these folks on github who submitted features and bugfixes.

-   Amit Sethi
-   [bigben87](https://github.com/bigben87)
-   [fallgesetz](https://github.com/fallgesetz)
-   [FlaPer87](https://github.com/FlaPer87)
-   [lukenowak](https://github.com/lukenowak)
-   NicolasDelaby
-   sacha@ssl.co.uk
-   SimpleSeb
-   [tehmaze](https://github.com/tehmaze)

## License

python-magic is distributed under the MIT license.  See the included
LICENSE file for details.