lz-string

What is lz-string?

The lz-string npm package provides compression and decompression functionalities for strings. It is designed to be lightweight and fast, and it can compress data to a smaller size to save storage space or reduce the amount of data transmitted over the network.

What are lz-string's main functionalities?

Compression

This feature allows you to compress a string into a smaller one, which can be useful for saving space or reducing the size of data sent over the network.

const LZString = require('lz-string');
const compressed = LZString.compress('This is my string to compress.');

Decompression

This feature allows you to decompress a string that was previously compressed with lz-string, restoring it to its original form.

const LZString = require('lz-string');
const compressed = LZString.compress('This is my string to compress.');
const decompressed = LZString.decompress(compressed);

Compression to UTF-16

This feature compresses a string and encodes it in UTF-16 format, which can be useful for environments that do not support UTF-8.

const LZString = require('lz-string');
const compressed = LZString.compressToUTF16('This is my string to compress.');

Decompression from UTF-16

This feature decompresses a string that was compressed to UTF-16 format back to its original string.

const LZString = require('lz-string');
const compressed = LZString.compressToUTF16('This is my string to compress.');
const decompressed = LZString.decompressFromUTF16(compressed);

Compression to Base64

This feature compresses a string and encodes it in Base64, which is useful for safe transport over protocols that might not handle binary data well.

const LZString = require('lz-string');
const compressed = LZString.compressToBase64('This is my string to compress.');

Decompression from Base64

This feature decompresses a string that was compressed and encoded in Base64 back to its original string.

const LZString = require('lz-string');
const compressed = LZString.compressToBase64('This is my string to compress.');
const decompressed = LZString.decompressFromBase64(compressed);

Other packages similar to lz-string

pako

Pako is an npm package that provides high-speed zlib port to JavaScript, which works in the browser and node.js. It offers similar compression and decompression functionalities but uses the zlib library, which is a different algorithm than LZ-based compression used by lz-string.

snappy

Snappy is a fast compressor/decompressor npm package that is based on the snappy library. It is known for its high speed and reasonable compression ratio, and it is used by systems like Cassandra and Hadoop. Unlike lz-string, snappy focuses on speed rather than achieving the highest compression ratio.

brotli

Brotli is a compression algorithm developed by Google, and the npm package provides Node.js bindings for the Brotli library. It offers higher compression ratios than lz-string, especially for text data, and is supported natively by many modern browsers for HTTP compression.

README

lz-string

LZ-based compression algorithm for JavaScript

Warning (migrating from version 1.3.4 - nov 2014)

Files have changed locations and name since a recent release. The new release file is in libs/lz-string.min.js (or in libs/lz-string.js if you don't care for the minified version)

Sorry about the mess in other repos. This will not happen again.

Note on server side

If you are using one of the ports of lz-string to decode on the server what was encoded in the browser, you might want to use version 1.3.7 as the version 1.3.8 introduced a slight change in the encoding. While the JS versions are completely cross-compatible, the PHP, Go, ... versions might not be as forgiving.

Install via npm

$ npm install -g lz-string
$ lz-string input.js > output.txt

Home page

Home page for this program with examples, documentation and a live demo: http://pieroxy.net/blog/pages/lz-string/index.html

Other languages

This lib has numerous ports to other languages, for server side processing, mostly. Here they are:

• Java: by Diogo Duailibe
• Java: by rufushuang, with base64 support and better performances
• C#: by Jawa-the-Hutt
• C#: by kreudom, another implementation in C#, more up to date
• PHP: by nullpunkt
• Python3: by eduardtomasek
• Another Python: by marcel-dancak
• Go I helped a friend to write a Go implementation of the decompression algorithm
• Go Austin wrote the decompression part as well
• Elixir by Michael Shapiro
• C++/QT by AmiArt
• C++ by Andrey Krasnov, another implementation in C++11
• VB.NET by gsemac
• Salesforce Apex (Java like language): bilal did the port
• Kotlin: from Zen Liu
• Dart: from skipness
• Haxe: from markknol
• Rust: from adumbidiot

Changelog

[1.5.0] - 2023-06-20

• Minified version