Welcome to BinaryOrNot’s documentation!

Contents:

BinaryOrNot

https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/binaryornot.svg?style=flat Documentation Status Updates

Ultra-lightweight pure Python package to guess whether a file is binary or text, using a heuristic similar to Perl’s pp_fttext and its analysis by @eliben.

Status

It works, and people are using this package in various places. But it doesn’t cover all edge cases yet.

The code could be improved. Pull requests welcome! As of now, it is based on these snippets, but that may change:

Features

Has tests for these file types:

  • Text: .txt, .css, .json, .svg, .js, .lua, .pl, .rst
  • Binary: .png, .gif, .jpg, .tiff, .bmp, .DS_Store, .eot, .otf, .ttf, .woff, .rgb

Has tests for numerous encodings.

Why?

You may be thinking, “I can write this in 2 lines of code?!”

It’s actually not that easy. Here’s a great article about how Perl’s heuristic to guess file types works: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2011/10/19/perls-guess-if-file-is-text-or-binary-implemented-in-python/

And that’s just where we started. Over time, we’ve found more edge cases and our heuristic has gotten more complex.

Also, this package saves you from having to write and thoroughly test your code with all sorts of weird file types and encodings, cross-platform.

Builds

Linux (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server Edition 64 bit):

https://img.shields.io/travis/audreyr/binaryornot/master.svg

Windows (Windows Server 2012 R2 (x64)):

https://img.shields.io/appveyor/ci/audreyr/binaryornot/master.svg

Credits

Creator

This project was created by Audrey Roy Greenfeld.

Installation

At the command line:

$ easy_install binaryornot

Or, if you have pip:

$ pip install binaryornot

Quickstart

To use BinaryOrNot in a project, import it and use is_binary() to guess whether a file is binary or text.

For example:

>>> from binaryornot.check import is_binary
>>> is_binary('README.rst')
False

CommandLine Help

You can make use of BinaryOrNot on the commandline by using the binaryornot command followed by your filename

For example:

>>> binaryornot README.rst
False

Please note, the binaryornot command requires one positional argument which is the filename or –help to view the help function

For example:

>>> binaryornot --help

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.

You can contribute in many ways:

Types of Contributions

Report Bugs

Report bugs at https://github.com/audreyr/binaryornot/issues.

If you are reporting a bug, please include:

  • Your operating system name and version.
  • Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.
  • Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

Fix Bugs

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with “bug” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Implement Features

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with “feature” is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Write Documentation

BinaryOrNot could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official BinaryOrNot docs, in docstrings, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such.

Submit Feedback

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at https://github.com/audreyr/binaryornot/issues.

If you are proposing a feature:

  • Explain in detail how it would work.
  • Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.
  • Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that contributions are welcome :)

Get Started!

Ready to contribute? Here’s how to set up binaryornot for local development.

  1. Fork the binaryornot repo on GitHub.

  2. Clone your fork locally:

    $ git clone git@github.com:your_name_here/binaryornot.git

  3. Install your local copy into a virtualenv. Assuming you have virtualenvwrapper installed, this is how you set up your fork for local development:

    $ mkvirtualenv binaryornot
$ cd binaryornot/
$ python setup.py develop

  4. Create a branch for local development:

    $ git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

Now you can make your changes locally.

5. When you’re done making changes, check that your changes pass flake8 and the tests, including testing other Python versions with tox:

$ flake8 binaryornot tests
    $ python setup.py test
$ tox

To get flake8 and tox, just pip install them into your virtualenv.

  1. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

    $ git add .
$ git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
$ git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature

  2. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Pull Request Guidelines

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:

  1. The pull request should include tests.
  2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function with a docstring, and add the feature to the list in README.rst.
  3. The pull request should work for Python 2.6, 2.7, and 3.7, and for PyPy. Check https://travis-ci.org/audreyr/binaryornot/pull_requests and make sure that the tests pass for all supported Python versions.

Tips

To run a subset of tests:

$ python -m unittest tests.test_binaryornot

Credits

Development Leads

Contributors

History

0.4.4 (2017-04-13)

  • Notify users for file i/o issues. Thanks @lukehinds!

0.4.3 (2017-04-13)

0.4.2 (2017-04-12)

0.4.0 (2015-08-21)

  • Enhanced detection for some binary streams and UTF texts. (#10, 11) Thanks @pombredanne.
  • Set up Appveyor for continuous testing on Windows. Thanks @pydanny.
  • Update link to Perl source implementation. (#9) Thanks @asmeurer @pombredanne @audreyr.
  • Handle UnicodeDecodeError in check. (#12) Thanks @DRMacIver.
  • Add very simple Hypothesis based tests. (#13) Thanks @DRMacIver.
  • Use setup to determine requirements and remove redundant requirements.txt. (#14) Thanks @hackebrot.
  • Add documentation status badge to README.rst. (#15) Thanks @hackebrot.
  • Run tox in travis.yml. Add pypy and Python 3.4 to tox environments. (#16) Thanks @hackebrot @pydanny.
  • Handle LookupError when detecting encoding. (#17) Thanks @DRMacIver.

0.3.0 (2014-05-05)

  • Include tests, docs in source package. (#6) Thanks @vincentbernat.
  • Drop unnecessary shebangs and executable bits. (#8) Thanks @scop.
  • Generate string of printable extended ASCII bytes only once. (#7) Thanks @scop.
  • Make number of bytes to read parametrizable. (#7) Thanks @scop.

0.2.0 (2013-09-22)

  • Complete rewrite of everything. Thanks @ncoghlan.

0.1.1 (2013-08-17)

  • Tests pass under Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, PyPy.

0.1.0 (2013-08-17)

  • First release on PyPI.

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