---
id: webencodings
version: "0.5.1"
license: BSD
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: abandoned
---

# webencodings — Character encoding aliases for legacy web content

License: permissive · Maintenance: abandoned · Popularity: top 1,000 on PyPI

## Install

pip install webencodings
uv add webencodings
poetry add webencodings

## Description

python-webencodings
===================

This is a Python implementation of the `WHATWG Encoding standard
<http://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/>`_.

* Latest documentation: http://packages.python.org/webencodings/
* Source code and issue tracker:
  https://github.com/gsnedders/python-webencodings
* PyPI releases: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/webencodings
* License: BSD
* Python 2.6+ and 3.3+

In order to be compatible with legacy web content
when interpreting something like ``Content-Type: text/html; charset=latin1``,
tools need to use a particular set of aliases for encoding labels
as well as some overriding rules.
For example, ``US-ASCII`` and ``iso-8859-1`` on the web are actually
aliases for ``windows-1252``, and an UTF-8 or UTF-16 BOM takes precedence
over any other encoding declaration.
The Encoding standard defines all such details so that implementations do
not have to reverse-engineer each other.

This module has encoding labels and BOM detection,
but the actual implementation for encoders and decoders is Python’s.

## AI interpretation — verify before relying

Implements the WHATWG Encoding standard for Python, providing encoding label aliases and BOM detection to correctly interpret character encodings in legacy web content according to web specifications.

Verdict: webencodings is a lightweight, dependency-free implementation of the WHATWG Encoding standard with permissive BSD licensing and no known vulnerabilities. However, it is abandoned—no updates since 2017—so it should only be used if you need legacy web encoding compatibility and are comfortable maintaining it yourself or accepting that it will not receive security or compatibility updates.

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/webencodings) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/webencodings/)