1 ## Pure JS character encoding conversion [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite)
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`).
15 [![NPM Stats](https://nodei.co/npm/iconv-lite.png?downloads=true&downloadRank=true)](https://npmjs.org/packages/iconv-lite/)
20 var iconv = require('iconv-lite');
22 // Convert from an encoded buffer to js string.
23 str = iconv.decode(Buffer.from([0x68, 0x65, 0x6c, 0x6c, 0x6f]), 'win1251');
25 // Convert from js string to an encoded buffer.
26 buf = iconv.encode("Sample input string", 'win1251');
28 // Check if encoding is supported
29 iconv.encodingExists("us-ascii")
32 ### Streaming API (Node v0.10+)
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);
40 converterStream.on('data', function(str) {
41 console.log(str); // Do something with decoded strings, chunk-by-chunk.
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'));
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
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).
64 // After this call all Node basic primitives will understand iconv-lite encodings.
65 iconv.extendNodeEncodings();
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');
74 http.createServer(function(req, res) {
75 req.setEncoding('big5');
76 req.collect(function(err, body) {
81 fs.createReadStream("file.txt", "shift_jis");
83 // External modules are also supported (if they use Node primitives, which they probably do).
84 request = require('request');
86 url: "http://github.com/",
90 // To remove extensions
91 iconv.undoExtendNodeEncodings();
94 ## Supported encodings
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.
103 See [all supported encodings on wiki](https://github.com/ashtuchkin/iconv-lite/wiki/Supported-Encodings).
105 Most singlebyte encodings are generated automatically from [node-iconv](https://github.com/bnoordhuis/node-iconv). Thank you Ben Noordhuis and libiconv authors!
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!
110 ## Encoding/decoding speed
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
145 $ git clone git@github.com:ashtuchkin/iconv-lite.git
150 $ # To view performance:
151 $ node test/performance.js
153 $ # To view test coverage:
155 $ open coverage/lcov-report/index.html