How do I gzip compress a string in Python?

Question

How do I gzip compress a string in Python?

gzip.GzipFile exists, but that's for file objects - what about with plain strings?

Answer 1

s = "a long string of characters"

g = gzip.open('gzipfilename.gz', 'w', 5) # ('filename', 'read/write mode', compression level)
g.write(s)
g.close()

Answer 2

Pick a suitable module from http://docs.python.org/library/archiving.html -- either gzip or zlib, depending on your exact needs.

Answer 3

For those who want to compress a Pandas dataframe in JSON format:

Tested with Python 3.6 and Pandas 0.23

import sys
import zlib, lzma, bz2
import math

def convert_size(size_bytes):
    if size_bytes == 0:
        return "0B"
    size_name = ("B", "KB", "MB", "GB", "TB", "PB", "EB", "ZB", "YB")
    i = int(math.floor(math.log(size_bytes, 1024)))
    p = math.pow(1024, i)
    s = round(size_bytes / p, 2)
    return "%s %s" % (s, size_name[i])

dataframe = pd.read_csv('...') # your CSV file
dataframe_json = dataframe.to_json(orient='split')
data = dataframe_json.encode()
compressed_data = bz2.compress(data)
decompressed_data = bz2.decompress(compressed_data).decode()
dataframe_aux = pd.read_json(decompressed_data, orient='split')

#Original data size:  10982455 10.47 MB
#Encoded data size:  10982439 10.47 MB
#Compressed data size:  1276457 1.22 MB (lzma, slow), 2087131 1.99 MB (zlib, fast), 1410908 1.35 MB (bz2, fast)
#Decompressed data size:  10982455 10.47 MB
print('Original data size: ', sys.getsizeof(dataframe_json), convert_size(sys.getsizeof(dataframe_json)))
print('Encoded data size: ', sys.getsizeof(data), convert_size(sys.getsizeof(data)))
print('Compressed data size: ', sys.getsizeof(compressed_data), convert_size(sys.getsizeof(compressed_data)))
print('Decompressed data size: ', sys.getsizeof(decompressed_data), convert_size(sys.getsizeof(decompressed_data)))

print(dataframe.head())
print(dataframe_aux.head())

Answer 4

The easiest way is the zlib encoding:

compressed_value = s.encode("zlib")

Then you decompress it with:

plain_string_again = compressed_value.decode("zlib")

Answer 5

If you want to produce a complete gzip-compatible binary string, with the header etc, you could use gzip.GzipFile together with StringIO:

import StringIO
import gzip
out = StringIO.StringIO()
with gzip.GzipFile(fileobj=out, mode="w") as f:
  f.write("This is mike number one, isn't this a lot of fun?")
out.getvalue()

# returns '\x1f\x8b\x08\x00\xbd\xbe\xe8N\x02\xff\x0b\xc9\xc8,V\x00\xa2\xdc\xcc\xecT\x85\xbc\xd2\xdc\xa4\xd4"\x85\xfc\xbcT\x1d\xa0X\x9ez\x89B\tH:Q!\'\xbfD!?M!\xad4\xcf\x1e\x00w\xd4\xea\xf41\x00\x00\x00'