How to Get File Character Encoding in Node.js ?

Character encoding is essential when working with text files, as it determines how characters are represented in bytes. Different files may use different encodings, such as UTF-8, ASCII, or ISO-8859-1. Determining the character encoding of a file in Node.js can help ensure proper reading and processing of the file's content.

Why Is Character Encoding Important?

• Data Integrity: Incorrect character encoding can lead to garbled text and data corruption.
• Compatibility: Different systems may use different encodings, so detecting and converting encoding ensures compatibility.
• Internationalization: Supports multiple languages and special characters.

Syntax

languageEncoding(pathToFile).then(
    fileInfo => // Do anything
);

Parameters:

pathToFile: (Relative or Absolute)Path of the actual file.

Return Value:

An Object having following values, { language: french, encoding: CP1252, confidence: 0.99 }

Installation Steps

Step 1: Make a folder structure for the project.

mkdir myapp

Step 2: Navigate to the project directory

cd myapp

Step 3: Initialize the NodeJs project inside the myapp folder.

npm init -y

Step 4: Install the required dependencies by the following command:

npm install detect-file-encoding-and-language

The updated dependencies in package.json file will look like:

"dependencies": {
   "detect-file-encoding-and-language": "^2.4.0",
  }

Step 5: Make Filename- a.txt and the below text inside that.

Geeks for Geeks

Example: Implementation to write the code to show how to get file character encoding in Node.js

// app.js

import languageEncoding from "detect-file-encoding-and-language"

const pathToFile = "./a.txt"

languageEncoding(pathToFile)
    .then(fileInfo => console.log(fileInfo.encoding))
    .catch(err => console.log(err));

Step to Run Application: Run the application using the following command from the root directory of the project

node app.js