:mod:`!email.charset`: Representing character sets

:mod:!email.charset: Representing character sets

.. module:: email.charset :synopsis: Character Sets

Source code: :source:Lib/email/charset.py

This module is part of the legacy (Compat32) email API. In the new API only the aliases table is used.

The remaining text in this section is the original documentation of the module.

This module provides a class :class:Charset for representing character sets and character set conversions in email messages, as well as a character set registry and several convenience methods for manipulating this registry. Instances of :class:Charset are used in several other modules within the :mod:email package.

Import this class from the :mod:!email.charset module.

.. class:: Charset(input_charset=DEFAULT_CHARSET)

Map character sets to their email properties.

This class provides information about the requirements imposed on email for a specific character set. It also provides convenience routines for converting between character sets, given the availability of the applicable codecs. Given a character set, it will do its best to provide information on how to use that character set in an email message in an RFC-compliant way.

Certain character sets must be encoded with quoted-printable or base64 when used in email headers or bodies. Certain character sets must be converted outright, and are not allowed in email.

Optional input_charset is as described below; it is always coerced to lower case. After being alias normalized it is also used as a lookup into the registry of character sets to find out the header encoding, body encoding, and output conversion codec to be used for the character set. For example, if input_charset is iso-8859-1, then headers and bodies will be encoded using quoted-printable and no output conversion codec is necessary. If input_charset is euc-jp, then headers will be encoded with base64, bodies will not be encoded, but output text will be converted from the euc-jp character set to the iso-2022-jp character set.

:class:Charset instances have the following data attributes:

.. attribute:: input_charset

  The initial character set specified.  Common aliases are converted to
  their *official* email names (e.g. ``latin_1`` is converted to
  ``iso-8859-1``).  Defaults to 7-bit ``us-ascii``.

.. attribute:: header_encoding

  If the character set must be encoded before it can be used in an email
  header, this attribute will be set to ``charset.QP`` (for
  quoted-printable), ``charset.BASE64`` (for base64 encoding), or
  ``charset.SHORTEST`` for the shortest of QP or BASE64 encoding. Otherwise,
  it will be ``None``.

.. attribute:: body_encoding

  Same as *header_encoding*, but describes the encoding for the mail
  message's body, which indeed may be different than the header encoding.
  ``charset.SHORTEST`` is not allowed for *body_encoding*.

.. attribute:: output_charset

  Some character sets must be converted before they can be used in email
  headers or bodies.  If the *input_charset* is one of them, this attribute
  will contain the name of the character set output will be converted to.
  Otherwise, it will be ``None``.

.. attribute:: input_codec

  The name of the Python codec used to convert the *input_charset* to
  Unicode.  If no conversion codec is necessary, this attribute will be
  ``None``.

.. attribute:: output_codec

  The name of the Python codec used to convert Unicode to the
  *output_charset*.  If no conversion codec is necessary, this attribute
  will have the same value as the *input_codec*.

:class:Charset instances also have the following methods:

.. method:: get_body_encoding()

  Return the content transfer encoding used for body encoding.

  This is either the string ``quoted-printable`` or ``base64`` depending on
  the encoding used, or it is a function, in which case you should call the
  function with a single argument, the Message object being encoded.  The
  function should then set the :mailheader:`Content-Transfer-Encoding`
  header itself to whatever is appropriate.

  Returns the string ``quoted-printable`` if *body_encoding* is ``QP``,
  returns the string ``base64`` if *body_encoding* is ``BASE64``, and
  returns the string ``7bit`` otherwise.

.. method:: get_output_charset()

  Return the output character set.

  This is the *output_charset* attribute if that is not ``None``, otherwise
  it is *input_charset*.

.. method:: header_encode(string)

  Header-encode the string *string*.

  The type of encoding (base64 or quoted-printable) will be based on the
  *header_encoding* attribute.

.. method:: header_encode_lines(string, maxlengths)

  Header-encode a *string* by converting it first to bytes.

  This is similar to :meth:`header_encode` except that the string is fit
  into maximum line lengths as given by the argument *maxlengths*, which
  must be an iterator: each element returned from this iterator will provide
  the next maximum line length.

.. method:: body_encode(string)

  Body-encode the string *string*.

  The type of encoding (base64 or quoted-printable) will be based on the
  *body_encoding* attribute.

The :class:Charset class also provides a number of methods to support standard operations and built-in functions.

.. method:: str()

  Returns *input_charset* as a string coerced to lower
  case. :meth:`!__repr__` is an alias for :meth:`!__str__`.

.. method:: eq(other)

  This method allows you to compare two :class:`Charset` instances for
  equality.

.. method:: ne(other)

  This method allows you to compare two :class:`Charset` instances for
  inequality.

The :mod:!email.charset module also provides the following functions for adding new entries to the global character set, alias, and codec registries:

.. function:: add_charset(charset, header_enc=None, body_enc=None, output_charset=None)

Add character properties to the global registry.

charset is the input character set, and must be the canonical name of a character set.

Optional header_enc and body_enc is either charset.QP for quoted-printable, charset.BASE64 for base64 encoding, charset.SHORTEST for the shortest of quoted-printable or base64 encoding, or None for no encoding. SHORTEST is only valid for header_enc. The default is None for no encoding.

Optional output_charset is the character set that the output should be in. Conversions will proceed from input charset, to Unicode, to the output charset when the method :meth:Charset.convert is called. The default is to output in the same character set as the input.

Both input_charset and output_charset must have Unicode codec entries in the module's character set-to-codec mapping; use :func:add_codec to add codecs the module does not know about. See the :mod:codecs module's documentation for more information.

The global character set registry is kept in the module global dictionary CHARSETS.

.. function:: add_alias(alias, canonical)

Add a character set alias. alias is the alias name, e.g. latin-1. canonical is the character set's canonical name, e.g. iso-8859-1.

The global charset alias registry is kept in the module global dictionary ALIASES.

.. function:: add_codec(charset, codecname)

Add a codec that map characters in the given character set to and from Unicode.

charset is the canonical name of a character set. codecname is the name of a Python codec, as appropriate for the second argument to the :class:str's :meth:~str.encode method.