Question

I try to compress string in Java like php’s gzcompress function does it. But I can’t get the same byte arrays in result.

My php code:

<?php
echo 'This is a test';
$compressed = gzcompress('This is a test');
echo '<br>';
for ($i=0; $i<strlen($compressed); $i++) {
    echo '['.$i.'] = '.ord($compressed[$i]).'<br>';
}
?>

The result:

This is a test

[0] = 120 
[1] = 156 
[2] = 11 
[3] = 201 
[4] = 200 
[5] = 44 
[6] = 86 
[7] = 0 
[8] = 162 
[9] = 68 
[10] = 133 
[11] = 146 
[12] = 212 
[13] = 226 
[14] = 18 
[15] = 0 
[16] = 36 
[17] = 115 
[18] = 4 
[19] = 246 

Java code:

public class Main {

    public static byte[] compressString(String uncompressedString) throws IllegalArgumentException, IllegalStateException {
        try {
            byte[] utfEncodedBytes = uncompressedString.getBytes();
            ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            try (GZIPOutputStream gzipOutputStream = new GZIPOutputStream(baos)) {
                gzipOutputStream.write(utfEncodedBytes);
                gzipOutputStream.finish();
            }
            return baos.toByteArray();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("GZIP compression failed: " + e, e);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String input = "This is a test";
        System.out.println("Input:  " + input);
        byte[] compressed = compressString(input);
        for (int i = 0; i < compressed.length; i++) {
            System.out.println("[" + i + "] = " + (compressed[i] & 0xFF));
        }
    }
}

The result:

Input: This is a test

[0] = 31 
[1] = 139 
[2] = 8 
[3] = 0 
[4] = 0 
[5] = 0 
[6] = 0 
[7] = 0 
[8] = 0 
[9] = 0 
[10] = 11 
[11] = 201 
[12] = 200 
[13] = 44 
[14] = 86 
[15] = 0 
[16] = 162 
[17] = 68 
[18] = 133 
[19] = 146 
[20] = 212 
[21] = 226 
[22] = 18 
[23] = 0 
[24] = 50 
[25] = 159 
[26] = 122 
[27] = 192 
[28] = 14
[29] = 0 
[30] = 0 
[31] = 0 

Middle parts of compressed arrays are the same. But they are different in the start and in the end.

Answer 1

The documentation for the gzcompress function specifically states that the compression algorithm it uses is zlib, which is

not the same as gzip compression, which includes some header data. See gzencode() for gzip compression.

Java’s GZIPOutputStream does proper gzip compression including the right headers. DeflaterOutputStream does plain deflate without the gzip headers, which may be closer to what you are after, or there are third party solutions such as JZlib.