Class EncodingGuesser

java.lang.Object
eu.medsea.util.EncodingGuesser

public class EncodingGuesser extends Object
This class contains a list of known encodings used by TextMimeType. It is used by the TextMimeDetector but can be used as a stand alone utility class in other parts of your program if you want.

The getPossibleEncodings() method takes a byte [] as its source and the bigger the array the better the detection ratio will be.

The class is initialised with an empty list of encodings so it is effectively disabled by default. You can set the supported encodings to ALL of the encodings supported by your JVM at any point during your program execution using the following method EncodingGuesser.setSupportedEncodings(EncodingGuesser.getCanonicalEncodingNamesSupportedByJVM()); You can also clear the encodings and disable the detector at any point by calling EncodingGuesser.setSupportedEncodings(new ArrayList()). If later on you dynamically add more encodings they will NOT be detected automatically by this class but you can recall the above method.

As the JVM can have a large number of encodings and each one is checked against the byte array it may be wise to remove all encodings you are sure you will not use to trim down on the number of tests. It will not stop at the first match but will try to match as many encodings as possible and return this as a Collection.

A common scenario is where an application can handle only a small set of text encodings such as UTF-8 and windows-1252. If this is your case you can use the setSupportedEncodings() method so that these are the only encodings in the supported encodings Collection. This will dramatically improve the performance of this class.

It's possible that small byte arrays that should contain binary data are considered possible text matches but generally binary data, such as images, should return no matches.

There are some optimisations that are applicable to text files containing BOM's (Byte Order Marks) such as UTF-8, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE, UTF-32LE and UTF-32BE. These are not required but if present will greatly improve the resultant possible matches returned from the getPossibleEncodings() method.

  • Constructor Details

    • EncodingGuesser

      public EncodingGuesser()
  • Method Details

    • isKnownEncoding

      public static boolean isKnownEncoding(String encoding)
      Check if the encoding String is one of the encodings supported.
      Parameters:
      encoding -
      Returns:
      true if encoding is understood by this class
    • getPossibleEncodings

      public static Collection getPossibleEncodings(byte[] data)
      Get a Collection of all the possible encodings this byte array could be used to represent.
      Parameters:
      data -
      Returns:
      the Collection of possible encodings from the supported encodings
    • removeEncoding

      public static boolean removeEncoding(String encoding)
      Allows you to remove an encoding from the supported encodings you are not interested in.
      Parameters:
      encoding -
      Returns:
      true if removed else false
    • removeEncodings

      public static boolean removeEncodings(String[] encodings)
      Remove all valid encodings in the string array
      Parameters:
      encodings - String [] containing the encodings to remove
      Returns:
      true if at least one of the encodings was removed else false
    • getValidEncodings

      public static Collection getValidEncodings(String[] encodings)
      Get a Collection containing entries in both the supported encodings and the passed in String [] of encodings. This is used by TextMimeDetector to get a valid list of the preferred encodings.
      Parameters:
      encodings -
      Returns:
      a Collection containing all valid encodings contained in the passed in encodings array
    • getDefaultEncoding

      public static String getDefaultEncoding()
      Get the JVM default canonical encoding. For instance the canonical encoding for cp1252 is windows-1252
      Returns:
      the default canonical encoding name for the JVM
    • getSupportedEncodings

      public static Collection getSupportedEncodings()
      Get the Collection of currently supported encodings
      Returns:
      the supported encodings.
    • setSupportedEncodings

      public static Collection setSupportedEncodings(Collection encodings)
      Set the supported encodings
      Parameters:
      encodings - . If this is null the supported encodings are left unchanged.
      Returns:
      a copy of the currently supported encodings
    • getLengthBOM

      public static int getLengthBOM(String encoding, byte[] data)
      Get the length of a BOM for this this encoding and byte array
      Parameters:
      encoding -
      data -
      Returns:
      length of BOM if the data contains a BOM else returns 0
    • getByteArraySubArray

      public static byte[] getByteArraySubArray(byte[] a, int offset, int length)
      Get a sub array of this byte array starting at offset until length
      Parameters:
      a -
      offset -
      length -
      Returns:
      new byte array unless is would replicate or increase the original array in which case it returns the original
    • compareByteArrays

      public static boolean compareByteArrays(byte[] a, int aOffset, byte[] b, int bOffset, int length)
      Utility method to compare a region of two byte arrays for equality
      Parameters:
      a -
      aOffset -
      b -
      bOffset -
      length -
      Returns:
      true is the two regions contain the same byte values else false
    • getCanonicalEncodingNamesSupportedByJVM

      public static Collection getCanonicalEncodingNamesSupportedByJVM()
      Utility method to get all of the current encoding names, in canonical format, supported by your JVM at the time this is called.
      Returns:
      current Collection of canonical encoding names