iconv-lite - native javascript conversion between character encodings.

Usage

var iconv = require('iconv-lite');

// Convert from an encoded buffer to string.
str = iconv.fromEncoding(buf, 'win-1251');
// Or
str = iconv.decode(buf, 'win-1251');

// Convert from string to an encoded buffer.
buf = iconv.toEncoding("Sample input string", 'win-1251');
// Or
buf = iconv.encode("Sample input string", 'win-1251');

Supported encodings

Currently the following encodings supported:

• All node.js native encodings: 'utf8', 'ucs2', 'ascii', 'binary', 'base64'
• Base encodings: 'latin1'
• Western encoding: 'windows-1252'
• Cyrillic encodings: 'windows-1251', 'koi8-r', 'iso-8859-5'
• Simplified chinese: 'gbk', 'gb2313'
• Greek encodings: 'windows-1253', 'iso-8859-7'/'greek', 'cp737', 'cp28597'

Other encodings are easy to add, see the source. Please, participate.

Encoding/decoding speed

Comparison with iconv module (1000 times 256kb, on Core i5/2.5 GHz).

Operation\module            iconv       iconv-lite (this)
toEncoding('win1251')       19.57 mb/s  49.04 mb/s
fromEncoding('win1251')     16.39 mb/s  24.11 mb/s

Notes

This module is JavaScript-only, thus can be used in a sandboxed environment like Cloud9.

Untranslatable characters are set to '?'. No transliteration is currently supported, pull requests are welcome.

Testing

npm install --dev iconv-lite
vows

TODO

• Support streaming character conversion, something like util.pipe(req, iconv.fromEncodingStream('latin1')).
• Add more encodings.
• Add transliteration (best fit char).
• Add tests and correct support of variable-byte encodings (currently work is delegated to node).