File::LibMagic(3)

NAME
File::LibMagic - Determine MIME types of data or files using libmagic

VERSION
version 1.00

SYNOPSIS
  use File::LibMagic;

  my $magic = File::LibMagic->new();

  # prints a description like "ASCII text"
  print $magic->describe_filename('path/to/file');
  print $magic->describe_contents('this is some data');

  # Prints a MIME type like "text/plain; charset=us-ascii"
  print $magic->checktype_filename('path/to/file');
  print $magic->checktype_contents('this is some data');

DESCRIPTION
The "File::LibMagic" is a simple perl interface to libmagic from the file package (version 4.x or 5.x).

API
This module provides an object-oriented API with the following methods:

  File::LibMagic->new()
Creates a new File::LibMagic object.

Using the object oriented interface provides an efficient way to repeatedly determine the magic of a file.

Each File::LibMagic object loads the magic database independently of other File::LibMagic objects, so you may want to share a single object across many modules as a singleton.

This method takes an optional argument containing a path to the magic file. If the file doesn't exist this will throw an exception (but only with libmagic 4.17+).

If you don't pass an argument, it will throw an exception if it can't find any magic files at all.

  $magic->checktype_contents($data)
Returns the MIME type of the data given as the first argument. The data can be passed as a plain scalar or as a reference to a scalar.

This is the same value as would be returned by the "file" command with the "-i" switch.

  $magic->checktype_filename($filename)
Returns the MIME type of the given file.

This is the same value as would be returned by the "file" command with the "-i" switch.

  $magic->describe_contents($data)
Returns a description (as a string) of the data given as the first argument. The data can be passed as a plain scalar or as a reference to a scalar.

This is the same value as would be returned by the "file" command with no switches.

  $magic->describe_filename($filename)
Returns a description (as a string) of the given file.

This is the same value as would be returned by the "file" command with no switches.

DEPRECATED APIS
This module offers two different procedural APIS based on optional exports, the "easy" and "complete" interfaces. These APIS are now deprecated. I strongly recommend you use the OO interface. It's simpler than the complete interface and more efficient than the easy interface.

  The "easy" interface
This interface is exported by:

  use File::LibMagic ':easy';

This interface exports two subroutines:

•   MagicBuffer($data)

    Returns the description of a chunk of data, just like the "describe_contents" method.

•   MagicFile($filename)

    Returns the description of a file, just like the "describe_filename" method.

  The "complete" interface
This interface is exported by:

  use File::LibMagic ':easy';

This interface exports several subroutines:

•   magic_open($flags)

    This subroutine opens creates a magic handle. See the libmagic man page for a description of all the flags. These are exported by the ":complete" import.

      my $handle = magic_open(MAGIC_MIME);

•   magic_load($handle, $filename)

    This subroutine actually loads the magic file. The $filename argument is optional. There should be a sane default compiled into your "libmagic" library.

•   magic_buffer($handle, $data)

    This returns information about a chunk of data as a string. What it returns depends on the flags you passed to "magic_open", a description, a MIME type, etc.

•   magic_file($handle, $filename)

    This returns information about a file as a string. What it returns depends on the flags you passed to "magic_open", a description, a MIME type, etc.

•   magic_close($handle)

    Closes the magic handle.

EXCEPTIONS
This module can throw an exception if you system runs out of memory when trying to call "magic_open" internally.

SUPPORT
Please submit bugs to the CPAN RT system at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=File-LibMagic or via email at bug-file-libmagic@rt.cpan.org.

BUGS
This module is totally dependent on the version of file on your system. It's possible that the tests will fail because of this. Please report these failures so I can make the tests smarter. Please make sure to report the version of file on your system as well!

DEPENDENCIES/PREREQUISITES
This module requires file 4.x or file 5x and the associated libmagic library and headers (http://darwinsys.com/file/).

RELATED MODULES
Andreas created File::LibMagic because he wanted to use libmagic (from file 4.x) File::MMagic only worked with file 3.x.

File::MimeInfo::Magic uses the magic file from freedesktop.org which is encoded in XML, and is thus not the fastest approach. See http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2003-December/msg00260.html <http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2003-December/msg00260.html> for a discussion of this issue.

File::Type uses a relatively small magic file, which is directly hacked into the module code. It is quite fast but the database is quite small relative to the file package.

AUTHORS

•   Andreas Fitzner

•   Michael Hendricks <michael@ndrix.org>

•   Dave Rolsky <autarch@urth.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Andreas Fitzner, Michael Hendricks, and Dave Rolsky.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.