README.md (6534B)
1 ## Pure JS character encoding conversion [](https://travis-ci.org/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite) 2 3 * Doesn't need native code compilation. Works on Windows and in sandboxed environments like [Cloud9](http://c9.io). 4 * Used in popular projects like [Express.js (body_parser)](https://github.com/expressjs/body-parser), 5 [Grunt](http://gruntjs.com/), [Nodemailer](http://www.nodemailer.com/), [Yeoman](http://yeoman.io/) and others. 6 * Faster than [node-iconv](https://github.com/bnoordhuis/node-iconv) (see below for performance comparison). 7 * Intuitive encode/decode API 8 * Streaming support for Node v0.10+ 9 * [Deprecated] Can extend Node.js primitives (buffers, streams) to support all iconv-lite encodings. 10 * In-browser usage via [Browserify](https://github.com/substack/node-browserify) (~180k gzip compressed with Buffer shim included). 11 * Typescript [type definition file](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/blob/master/lib/index.d.ts) included. 12 * React Native is supported (need to explicitly `npm install` two more modules: `buffer` and `stream`). 13 * License: MIT. 14 15 [](https://npmjs.org/packages/iconv-lite/) 16 17 ## Usage 18 ### Basic API 19 ```javascript 20 var iconv = require('iconv-lite'); 21 22 // Convert from an encoded buffer to js string. 23 str = iconv.decode(Buffer.from([0x68, 0x65, 0x6c, 0x6c, 0x6f]), 'win1251'); 24 25 // Convert from js string to an encoded buffer. 26 buf = iconv.encode("Sample input string", 'win1251'); 27 28 // Check if encoding is supported 29 iconv.encodingExists("us-ascii") 30 ``` 31 32 ### Streaming API (Node v0.10+) 33 ```javascript 34 35 // Decode stream (from binary stream to js strings) 36 http.createServer(function(req, res) { 37 var converterStream = iconv.decodeStream('win1251'); 38 req.pipe(converterStream); 39 40 converterStream.on('data', function(str) { 41 console.log(str); // Do something with decoded strings, chunk-by-chunk. 42 }); 43 }); 44 45 // Convert encoding streaming example 46 fs.createReadStream('file-in-win1251.txt') 47 .pipe(iconv.decodeStream('win1251')) 48 .pipe(iconv.encodeStream('ucs2')) 49 .pipe(fs.createWriteStream('file-in-ucs2.txt')); 50 51 // Sugar: all encode/decode streams have .collect(cb) method to accumulate data. 52 http.createServer(function(req, res) { 53 req.pipe(iconv.decodeStream('win1251')).collect(function(err, body) { 54 assert(typeof body == 'string'); 55 console.log(body); // full request body string 56 }); 57 }); 58 ``` 59 60 ### [Deprecated] Extend Node.js own encodings 61 > NOTE: This doesn't work on latest Node versions. See [details](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/wiki/Node-v4-compatibility). 62 63 ```javascript 64 // After this call all Node basic primitives will understand iconv-lite encodings. 65 iconv.extendNodeEncodings(); 66 67 // Examples: 68 buf = new Buffer(str, 'win1251'); 69 buf.write(str, 'gbk'); 70 str = buf.toString('latin1'); 71 assert(Buffer.isEncoding('iso-8859-15')); 72 Buffer.byteLength(str, 'us-ascii'); 73 74 http.createServer(function(req, res) { 75 req.setEncoding('big5'); 76 req.collect(function(err, body) { 77 console.log(body); 78 }); 79 }); 80 81 fs.createReadStream("file.txt", "shift_jis"); 82 83 // External modules are also supported (if they use Node primitives, which they probably do). 84 request = require('request'); 85 request({ 86 url: "http://github.com/", 87 encoding: "cp932" 88 }); 89 90 // To remove extensions 91 iconv.undoExtendNodeEncodings(); 92 ``` 93 94 ## Supported encodings 95 96 * All node.js native encodings: utf8, ucs2 / utf16-le, ascii, binary, base64, hex. 97 * Additional unicode encodings: utf16, utf16-be, utf-7, utf-7-imap. 98 * All widespread singlebyte encodings: Windows 125x family, ISO-8859 family, 99 IBM/DOS codepages, Macintosh family, KOI8 family, all others supported by iconv library. 100 Aliases like 'latin1', 'us-ascii' also supported. 101 * All widespread multibyte encodings: CP932, CP936, CP949, CP950, GB2312, GBK, GB18030, Big5, Shift_JIS, EUC-JP. 102 103 See [all supported encodings on wiki](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/wiki/Supported-Encodings). 104 105 Most singlebyte encodings are generated automatically from [node-iconv](https://github.com/bnoordhuis/node-iconv). Thank you Ben Noordhuis and libiconv authors! 106 107 Multibyte encodings are generated from [Unicode.org mappings](http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/) and [WHATWG Encoding Standard mappings](http://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/). Thank you, respective authors! 108 109 110 ## Encoding/decoding speed 111 112 Comparison with node-iconv module (1000x256kb, on MacBook Pro, Core i5/2.6 GHz, Node v0.12.0). 113 Note: your results may vary, so please always check on your hardware. 114 115 operation iconv@2.1.4 iconv-lite@0.4.7 116 ---------------------------------------------------------- 117 encode('win1251') ~96 Mb/s ~320 Mb/s 118 decode('win1251') ~95 Mb/s ~246 Mb/s 119 120 ## BOM handling 121 122 * Decoding: BOM is stripped by default, unless overridden by passing `stripBOM: false` in options 123 (f.ex. `iconv.decode(buf, enc, {stripBOM: false})`). 124 A callback might also be given as a `stripBOM` parameter - it'll be called if BOM character was actually found. 125 * If you want to detect UTF-8 BOM when decoding other encodings, use [node-autodetect-decoder-stream](https://github.com/danielgindi/node-autodetect-decoder-stream) module. 126 * Encoding: No BOM added, unless overridden by `addBOM: true` option. 127 128 ## UTF-16 Encodings 129 130 This library supports UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE and UTF-16 encodings. First two are straightforward, but UTF-16 is trying to be 131 smart about endianness in the following ways: 132 * Decoding: uses BOM and 'spaces heuristic' to determine input endianness. Default is UTF-16LE, but can be 133 overridden with `defaultEncoding: 'utf-16be'` option. Strips BOM unless `stripBOM: false`. 134 * Encoding: uses UTF-16LE and writes BOM by default. Use `addBOM: false` to override. 135 136 ## Other notes 137 138 When decoding, be sure to supply a Buffer to decode() method, otherwise [bad things usually happen](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/wiki/Use-Buffers-when-decoding). 139 Untranslatable characters are set to � or ?. No transliteration is currently supported. 140 Node versions 0.10.31 and 0.11.13 are buggy, don't use them (see #65, #77). 141 142 ## Testing 143 144 ```bash 145 $ git clone git@github.com:ashtuchkin/iconv-lite.git 146 $ cd iconv-lite 147 $ npm install 148 $ npm test 149 150 $ # To view performance: 151 $ node test/performance.js 152 153 $ # To view test coverage: 154 $ npm run coverage 155 $ open coverage/lcov-report/index.html 156 ```