Question

I need a zlib deflate compressed stream. In my implementation I must use a single stream over the entire session. during this session small chunks of data will be passed through the compressed stream. Everytime a chunk is passed it must be sent in compressed form immediately.

My first attempt was using DeflateStream but when I send the first chunk its compressed data wont appear until I close the stream.

Reading about zlib flush modes it appears as if there is one specific mode for what I need.

1. Am I using the correct class(DeflateStream) for zlib deflate compression?
2. How can I enable “sync flush” behavior?

Answer 1

The DotNetZip project has a submodule Zlib that contain an implementation of DeflateStream of its own.

This implementation has another property named FlushMode:

DeflateStream deflate = new DeflateStream(stream, CompressionMode.Compress);
deflate.FlushMode = FlushType.Sync;
deflate.Write (data, 0, data.Length);
//No call to deflate.Flush() needed, automatically flushed on every write.