[c#] Effective way to find any file's Encoding

.NET is not very helpful, but you can try the following algorithm:

1. try to find the encoding by BOM(byte order mark) ... very likely not to be found
2. try parsing into different encodings

Here is the call:

var encoding = FileHelper.GetEncoding(filePath);
if (encoding == null)
    throw new Exception("The file encoding is not supported. Please choose one of the following encodings: UTF8/UTF7/iso-8859-1");

Here is the code:

public class FileHelper
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Determines a text file's encoding by analyzing its byte order mark (BOM) and if not found try parsing into diferent encodings       
    /// Defaults to UTF8 when detection of the text file's endianness fails.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="filename">The text file to analyze.</param>
    /// <returns>The detected encoding or null.</returns>
    public static Encoding GetEncoding(string filename)
    {
        var encodingByBOM = GetEncodingByBOM(filename);
        if (encodingByBOM != null)
            return encodingByBOM;

        // BOM not found :(, so try to parse characters into several encodings
        var encodingByParsingUTF8 = GetEncodingByParsing(filename, Encoding.UTF8);
        if (encodingByParsingUTF8 != null)
            return encodingByParsingUTF8;

        var encodingByParsingLatin1 = GetEncodingByParsing(filename, Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1"));
        if (encodingByParsingLatin1 != null)
            return encodingByParsingLatin1;

        var encodingByParsingUTF7 = GetEncodingByParsing(filename, Encoding.UTF7);
        if (encodingByParsingUTF7 != null)
            return encodingByParsingUTF7;

        return null;   // no encoding found
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Determines a text file's encoding by analyzing its byte order mark (BOM)  
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="filename">The text file to analyze.</param>
    /// <returns>The detected encoding.</returns>
    private static Encoding GetEncodingByBOM(string filename)
    {
        // Read the BOM
        var byteOrderMark = new byte[4];
        using (var file = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
        {
            file.Read(byteOrderMark, 0, 4);
        }

        // Analyze the BOM
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0x2b && byteOrderMark[1] == 0x2f && byteOrderMark[2] == 0x76) return Encoding.UTF7;
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0xef && byteOrderMark[1] == 0xbb && byteOrderMark[2] == 0xbf) return Encoding.UTF8;
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0xff && byteOrderMark[1] == 0xfe) return Encoding.Unicode; //UTF-16LE
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0xfe && byteOrderMark[1] == 0xff) return Encoding.BigEndianUnicode; //UTF-16BE
        if (byteOrderMark[0] == 0 && byteOrderMark[1] == 0 && byteOrderMark[2] == 0xfe && byteOrderMark[3] == 0xff) return Encoding.UTF32;

        return null;    // no BOM found
    }

    private static Encoding GetEncodingByParsing(string filename, Encoding encoding)
    {            
        var encodingVerifier = Encoding.GetEncoding(encoding.BodyName, new EncoderExceptionFallback(), new DecoderExceptionFallback());

        try
        {
            using (var textReader = new StreamReader(filename, encodingVerifier, detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks: true))
            {
                while (!textReader.EndOfStream)
                {                        
                    textReader.ReadLine();   // in order to increment the stream position
                }

                // all text parsed ok
                return textReader.CurrentEncoding;
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex) { }

        return null;    // 
    }
}