def search_function(encoding):
    """
    Register our "bad codecs" with Python's codecs API. This involves adding
    a search function that takes in an encoding name, and returns a codec
    for that encoding if it knows one, or None if it doesn't.

    The encodings this will match are:

    - Encodings of the form 'sloppy-windows-NNNN' or 'sloppy-iso-8859-N',
      where the non-sloppy version is an encoding that leaves some bytes
      unmapped to characters.
    - The 'utf-8-variants' encoding, which has the several aliases seen
      above.
    """
    if encoding in _CACHE:
        return _CACHE[encoding]

    norm_encoding = normalize_encoding(encoding)
    codec = None
    if norm_encoding in UTF8_VAR_NAMES:
        from ftfy.bad_codecs.utf8_variants import CODEC_INFO
        codec = CODEC_INFO
    elif norm_encoding.startswith('sloppy_'):
        from ftfy.bad_codecs.sloppy import CODECS
        codec = CODECS.get(norm_encoding)

    if codec is not None:
        _CACHE[encoding] = codec

    return codec