Find the mime type of a file.

[Olive]

I want to have a list of all the images in a directory. To do so I want
to have a function that find the mime type of a file. I have found
mimetypes.guess_type but it only works by examining the extension. In
GNU/Linux the "file" utility do much better by actually looking at the
file. Is there an equivalent function in python (as a last resort I can
always use the external file utility).

Olive

 

[Chris Rebert]

I want to have a list of all the images in a directory. To do so I want
to have a function that find the mime type of a file. I have found
mimetypes.guess_type but it only works by examining the extension. In
GNU/Linux the "file" utility do much better by actually looking at the
file. Is there an equivalent function in python (as a last resort I can
always use the external file utility).

There's 3rd-party Python bindings for the library that underlies the
`file` command:
https://github.com/ahupp/python-magic
And there's an unrelated pure(?) Python standalone module from A-A-P:
http://www.a-a-p.org/exec/ref-filetype.html

Tip: google "file type detection python"

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Jon Clements]

I want to have a list of all the images in a directory. To do so I want
to have a function that find the mime type of a file. I have found
mimetypes.guess_type but it only works by examining the extension. In
GNU/Linux the "file" utility do much better by actually looking at the
file. Is there an equivalent function in python (as a last resort I can
always use the external file utility).

Olive

You could also try using PIL.(I hardly use it, but...)

from PIL import Image
for fname in [some list of filenames here]:
img = Image.open(fname)
print img.format

Might be more expensive than the file utility, but that's up to you to
determine (open might be lazy, or it might load it - there is a
separate load function though, so who knows).

hth,

Jon.