nodejs get file character encoding

Question

How can I find out what character encoding a given text file has?

var inputFile = "filename.txt";
var file = fs.readFileSync(inputFile); 
var data = new Buffer(file, "ascii");
var fileEncoding = some_clever_function(file);
if (fileEncoding !== "utf8") {
    // do something
}

Thanks

Answer 1

You can try to use external module, such as https://www.npmjs.com/package/detect-character-encoding

Answer 2

The previously mentioned module works for me too. Alternatively you could have a look at detect-file-encoding-and-language which I'm using at the moment.

Installation:

$ npm install detect-file-encoding-and-language

Usage:

// index.js

const languageEncoding = require("detect-file-encoding-and-language");

const pathToFile = "/home/username/documents/my-text-file.txt"

languageEncoding(pathToFile).then(fileInfo => console.log(fileInfo));
// Possible result: { language: japanese, encoding: Shift-JIS, confidence: { language: 0.97, encoding: 1 } }