Zlib Node.js v0.8.26 Manual & Documentation

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# Zlib#

    Stability: 3 - Stable

You can access this module with:

    var zlib = require('zlib');

This provides bindings to Gzip/Gunzip, Deflate/Inflate, and DeflateRaw/InflateRaw classes. Each class takes the same options, and is a readable/writable Stream.

## Examples#

Compressing or decompressing a file can be done by piping an fs.ReadStream into a zlib stream, then into an fs.WriteStream.

    var gzip = zlib.createGzip();
    var fs = require('fs');
    var inp = fs.createReadStream('input.txt');
    var out = fs.createWriteStream('input.txt.gz');

    inp.pipe(gzip).pipe(out);

Compressing or decompressing data in one step can be done by using the convenience methods.

    var input = '.................................';
    zlib.deflate(input, function(err, buffer) {
      if (!err) {
        console.log(buffer.toString('base64'));
      }
    });

    var buffer = new Buffer('eJzT0yMAAGTvBe8=', 'base64');
    zlib.unzip(buffer, function(err, buffer) {
      if (!err) {
        console.log(buffer.toString());
      }
    });

To use this module in an HTTP client or server, use the accept-encoding on requests, and the content-encoding header on responses.

Note: these examples are drastically simplified to show the basic concept. Zlib encoding can be expensive, and the results ought to be cached. See Memory Usage Tuning below for more information on the speed/memory/compression tradeoffs involved in zlib usage.

    // client request example
    var zlib = require('zlib');
    var http = require('http');
    var fs = require('fs');
    var request = http.get({ host: 'izs.me',
                             path: '/',
                             port: 80,
                             headers: { 'accept-encoding': 'gzip,deflate' } });
    request.on('response', function(response) {
      var output = fs.createWriteStream('izs.me_index.html');

      switch (response.headers['content-encoding']) {
        // or, just use zlib.createUnzip() to handle both cases
        case 'gzip':
          response.pipe(zlib.createGunzip()).pipe(output);
          break;
        case 'deflate':
          response.pipe(zlib.createInflate()).pipe(output);
          break;
        default:
          response.pipe(output);
          break;
      }
    });

    // server example
    // Running a gzip operation on every request is quite expensive.
    // It would be much more efficient to cache the compressed buffer.
    var zlib = require('zlib');
    var http = require('http');
    var fs = require('fs');
    http.createServer(function(request, response) {
      var raw = fs.createReadStream('index.html');
      var acceptEncoding = request.headers['accept-encoding'];
      if (!acceptEncoding) {
        acceptEncoding = '';
      }

      // Note: this is not a conformant accept-encoding parser.
      // See http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.3
      if (acceptEncoding.match(/\bdeflate\b/)) {
        response.writeHead(200, { 'content-encoding': 'deflate' });
        raw.pipe(zlib.createDeflate()).pipe(response);
      } else if (acceptEncoding.match(/\bgzip\b/)) {
        response.writeHead(200, { 'content-encoding': 'gzip' });
        raw.pipe(zlib.createGzip()).pipe(response);
      } else {
        response.writeHead(200, {});
        raw.pipe(response);
      }
    }).listen(1337);

## zlib.createGzip([options])#

Returns a new Gzip object with an options.

## zlib.createGunzip([options])#

Returns a new Gunzip object with an options.

## zlib.createDeflate([options])#

Returns a new Deflate object with an options.

## zlib.createInflate([options])#

Returns a new Inflate object with an options.

## zlib.createDeflateRaw([options])#

Returns a new DeflateRaw object with an options.

## zlib.createInflateRaw([options])#

Returns a new InflateRaw object with an options.

## zlib.createUnzip([options])#

Returns a new Unzip object with an options.

## Class: zlib.Gzip#

Compress data using gzip.

## Class: zlib.Gunzip#

Decompress a gzip stream.

## Class: zlib.Deflate#

Compress data using deflate.

## Class: zlib.Inflate#

Decompress a deflate stream.

## Class: zlib.DeflateRaw#

Compress data using deflate, and do not append a zlib header.

## Class: zlib.InflateRaw#

Decompress a raw deflate stream.

## Class: zlib.Unzip#

Decompress either a Gzip- or Deflate-compressed stream by auto-detecting the header.

## Convenience Methods#

All of these take a string or buffer as the first argument, and call the supplied callback with `callback(error, result)`. The compression/decompression engine is created using the default settings in all convenience methods. To supply different options, use the zlib classes directly.

## zlib.deflate(buf, callback)#

Compress a string with Deflate.

## zlib.deflateRaw(buf, callback)#

Compress a string with DeflateRaw.

## zlib.gzip(buf, callback)#

Compress a string with Gzip.

## zlib.gunzip(buf, callback)#

Decompress a raw Buffer with Gunzip.

## zlib.inflate(buf, callback)#

Decompress a raw Buffer with Inflate.

## zlib.inflateRaw(buf, callback)#

Decompress a raw Buffer with InflateRaw.

## zlib.unzip(buf, callback)#

Decompress a raw Buffer with Unzip.

## Options#

Each class takes an options object. All options are optional. (The convenience methods use the default settings for all options.)

Note that some options are only relevant when compressing, and are ignored by the decompression classes.

- chunkSize (default: 16*1024)
- windowBits
- level (compression only)
- memLevel (compression only)
- strategy (compression only)
- dictionary (deflate/inflate only, empty dictionary by default)

See the description of `deflateInit2` and `inflateInit2` at http://zlib.net/manual.html#Advanced for more information on these.

## Memory Usage Tuning#

From `zlib/zconf.h`, modified to node's usage:

The memory requirements for deflate are (in bytes):

    (1 << (windowBits+2)) +  (1 << (memLevel+9))

that is: 128K for windowBits=15 + 128K for memLevel = 8 (default values) plus a few kilobytes for small objects.

For example, if you want to reduce the default memory requirements from 256K to 128K, set the options to:

    { windowBits: 14, memLevel: 7 }

Of course this will generally degrade compression (there's no free lunch).

The memory requirements for inflate are (in bytes)

    1 << windowBits

that is, 32K for windowBits=15 (default value) plus a few kilobytes for small objects.

This is in addition to a single internal output slab buffer of size `chunkSize`, which defaults to 16K.

The speed of zlib compression is affected most dramatically by the `level` setting. A higher level will result in better compression, but will take longer to complete. A lower level will result in less compression, but will be much faster.

In general, greater memory usage options will mean that node has to make fewer calls to zlib, since it'll be able to process more data in a single `write` operation. So, this is another factor that affects the speed, at the cost of memory usage.

## Constants#

All of the constants defined in zlib.h are also defined on `require('zlib')`. In the normal course of operations, you will not need to ever set any of these. They are documented here so that their presence is not surprising. This section is taken almost directly from the zlib documentation. See

http://zlib.net/manual.html#Constants for more details.

Allowed flush values.

- `zlib.Z_NO_FLUSH`
- `zlib.Z_PARTIAL_FLUSH`
- `zlib.Z_SYNC_FLUSH`
- `zlib.Z_FULL_FLUSH`
- `zlib.Z_FINISH`
- `zlib.Z_BLOCK`
- `zlib.Z_TREES`

Return codes for the compression/decompression functions. Negative values are errors, positive values are used for special but normal events.

- `zlib.Z_OK`
- `zlib.Z_STREAM_END`
- `zlib.Z_NEED_DICT`
- `zlib.Z_ERRNO`
- `zlib.Z_STREAM_ERROR`
- `zlib.Z_DATA_ERROR`
- `zlib.Z_MEM_ERROR`
- `zlib.Z_BUF_ERROR`
- `zlib.Z_VERSION_ERROR`

Compression levels.

- `zlib.Z_NO_COMPRESSION`
- `zlib.Z_BEST_SPEED`
- `zlib.Z_BEST_COMPRESSION`
- `zlib.Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION`

Compression strategy.

- `zlib.Z_FILTERED`
- `zlib.Z_HUFFMAN_ONLY`
- `zlib.Z_RLE`
- `zlib.Z_FIXED`
- `zlib.Z_DEFAULT_STRATEGY`

Possible values of the data_type field.

- `zlib.Z_BINARY`
- `zlib.Z_TEXT`
- `zlib.Z_ASCII`
- `zlib.Z_UNKNOWN`

The deflate compression method (the only one supported in this version).

- `zlib.Z_DEFLATED`

For initializing zalloc, zfree, opaque.

- `zlib.Z_NULL`