unbzip2-stream

What is unbzip2-stream?

The unbzip2-stream npm package is a Node.js library used for decompressing data in the bzip2 format. It is particularly useful for handling large bzip2 files or streams, such as those downloaded from the internet or read from a file system, by decompressing them on-the-fly.

What are unbzip2-stream's main functionalities?

Decompress bzip2 file

This code demonstrates how to decompress a bzip2 compressed file using unbzip2-stream. It reads a bzip2 file, decompresses it, and writes the decompressed data to a new file.

const fs = require('fs');
const bunzip2 = require('unbzip2-stream');

fs.createReadStream('path/to/compressed-file.bz2')
  .pipe(bunzip2())
  .pipe(fs.createWriteStream('path/to/decompressed-file'));

Decompress bzip2 stream

This example shows how to decompress a bzip2 stream from a URL and pipe the output directly to the standard output. This is useful for processing data on-the-fly without storing it.

const request = require('request');
const bunzip2 = require('unbzip2-stream');

request('http://example.com/file.bz2')
  .pipe(bunzip2())
  .pipe(process.stdout);

Other packages similar to unbzip2-stream

node-bzip

node-bzip is another npm package that provides bzip2 compression and decompression functionalities. Compared to unbzip2-stream, node-bzip offers both compression and decompression, whereas unbzip2-stream is focused only on decompression.

compressjs

compressjs is a package that includes bzip2 compression and decompression among other compression algorithms. It provides a broader range of compression algorithms than unbzip2-stream, making it more versatile if multiple compression methods are needed.

README

unbzip2-stream

streaming bzip2 decompressor in pure JS for Node and browserify.

Buffers

When browserified, the stream emits instances of feross/buffer instead of raw Uint8Arrays to have a consistant API across browsers and Node.

Usage

var bz2 = require('unbzip2-stream');
var fs = require('fs');

// decompress test.bz2 and output the result
fs.createReadStream('./test.bz2').pipe(bz2()).pipe(process.stdout);

Also see test/browser/download.js for an example of decompressing a file while downloading.

Or, using a <script> tag

<script src="https://npm-cdn.info/unbzip2-stream/dist/unbzip2-stream.min.js"></script>
<script>
    var myStream = window.unbzip2Stream();
    // now pipe stuff through it (see above)
</script>

Tests

To run tests in Node:

npm run test

To run tests in PhantomJS

npm run browser-test

Additional Tests

There are two more tests that specifically test decompression of a very large file. Because I don't want to include large binary files in this repository, the files are created by running an npm script.

npm run prepare-long-test

You can now

npm run long-test

And to run a test in chrome that downloads and decompresses a large binary file

npm run download-test

Open the browser's console to see the output.