python-magic is a python interface to the libmagic file type identification library. libmagic identifies file types by checking their headers according to a predefined list of file types. This functionality is exposed to the command line by the Unix command file.

>>> import magic
>>> magic.from_file("testdata/test.pdf")
'PDF document, version 1.2'
>>> magic.from_buffer(open("testdata/test.pdf").read(1024))
'PDF document, version 1.2'
>>> magic.from_file("testdata/test.pdf", mime=True)
'application/pdf'

There is also a Magic class that provides more direct control, including overriding the magic database file and turning on character encoding dectection. This is not recommended for general use. In particular, it its not safe for sharing across multiple threads and will fail throw if this is attempted.

The current stable version of python-magic is available on pypi and can be installed by running pip install python-magic.

Other sources:

• pypi: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-magic/
• github: https://github.com/ahupp/python-magic

On Windows, you need to download and save the following libraries under C:\Windows\System32:

• regex2.dll from sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/files/regex/
• zlib1.dll from sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/files/zlib/
• magic1.dll from sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/files/file/

On OSX:

• When using Homebrew: brew install file-formula
• When using macports: port install file

• 'MagicException: could not find any magic files!': some installations of libmagic do not correctly point to their magic database file. Try specifying the path to the file explictly in the constructor: magic.Magic(magic_file="path_to_magic_file").

• 'WindowsError: [Error 193] %1 is not a valid Win32 application': Attempting to run the 32-bit libmagic DLL in a 64-bit build of python will fail with this error. I'm not aware of any publically available 64-bit builds of libmagic. You'll either need to build them yourself (pleae share docs!), or switch to a 32-bit Python.

Written by Adam Hupp in 2001 for a project that never got off the ground. It origionally used SWIG for the C library bindings, but switched to ctypes once that was part of the python standard library.

You can contact me via my website or github.

Thanks to these folks on github who submitted features and bugfixes.

• Amit Sethi
• bigben87
• fallgesetz
• FlaPer87
• lukenowak
• NicolasDelaby
• [email protected]
• SimpleSeb
• tehmaze

python-magic is distributed under the PSF License.