Introducing filemagic

filemagic provides a Python API for libmagic, the library behind Unix file command. It enables the Python developer to easilty test for file types from the extensive identification library that is shipped with libmagic.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

—Arthur C. Clark, 1961

Features

• Simple, Python API.
• Identifies named files or strings.
• Return a textual description, mime type or mime encoding.
• Provide custom magic files to customize file detection.
• Support for both Python2 and Python3.
• Support for both CPython and PyPy.

Table of Contents

• Guide to using filemagic
  • Background
  • Installation
  • Usage
  • Memory management
  • Unicode and filemagic
  • Reporting issues
• Command Line Invocation
• The filemagic API
  • Exceptions
  • Classes
  • Constants

Issues

If you encounter problems, please refer to Reporting issues from the guide.