pako

zlib port to javascript, very fast!

Why pako is cool:

• Results are binary equal to well known zlib (now contains ported zlib v1.2.8).
• Almost as fast in modern JS engines as C implementation (see benchmarks).
• Works in browsers, you can browserify any separate component.

This project was done to understand how fast JS can be and is it necessary to develop native C modules for CPU-intensive tasks. Enjoy the result!

Benchmarks:

node v12.16.3 (zlib 1.2.9), 1mb input sample:

deflate-imaya x 4.75 ops/sec ±4.93% (15 runs sampled)
deflate-pako x 10.38 ops/sec ±0.37% (29 runs sampled)
deflate-zlib x 17.74 ops/sec ±0.77% (46 runs sampled)
gzip-pako x 8.86 ops/sec ±1.41% (29 runs sampled)
inflate-imaya x 107 ops/sec ±0.69% (77 runs sampled)
inflate-pako x 131 ops/sec ±1.74% (82 runs sampled)
inflate-zlib x 258 ops/sec ±0.66% (88 runs sampled)
ungzip-pako x 115 ops/sec ±1.92% (80 runs sampled)

node v14.15.0 (google's zlib), 1mb output sample:

deflate-imaya x 4.93 ops/sec ±3.09% (16 runs sampled)
deflate-pako x 10.22 ops/sec ±0.33% (29 runs sampled)
deflate-zlib x 18.48 ops/sec ±0.24% (48 runs sampled)
gzip-pako x 10.16 ops/sec ±0.25% (28 runs sampled)
inflate-imaya x 110 ops/sec ±0.41% (77 runs sampled)
inflate-pako x 134 ops/sec ±0.66% (83 runs sampled)
inflate-zlib x 402 ops/sec ±0.74% (87 runs sampled)
ungzip-pako x 113 ops/sec ±0.62% (80 runs sampled)

zlib's test is partially affected by marshalling (that make sense for inflate only). You can change deflate level to 0 in benchmark source, to investigate details. For deflate level 6 results can be considered as correct.

Install:

npm install pako

Examples / API

Full docs - http://nodeca.github.io/pako/

1const pako = require('pako');
2
3// Deflate
4//
5const input = new Uint8Array();
6//... fill input data here
7const output = pako.deflate(input);
8
9// Inflate (simple wrapper can throw exception on broken stream)
10//
11const compressed = new Uint8Array();
12//... fill data to uncompress here
13try {
14  const result = pako.inflate(compressed);
15  // ... continue processing
16} catch (err) {
17  console.log(err);
18}
19
20//
21// Alternate interface for chunking & without exceptions
22//
23
24const deflator = new pako.Deflate();
25
26deflator.push(chunk1, false);
27deflator.push(chunk2); // second param is false by default.
28...
29deflator.push(chunk_last, true); // `true` says this chunk is last
30
31if (deflator.err) {
32  console.log(deflator.msg);
33}
34
35const output = deflator.result;
36
37
38const inflator = new pako.Inflate();
39
40inflator.push(chunk1);
41inflator.push(chunk2);
42...
43inflator.push(chunk_last); // no second param because end is auto-detected
44
45if (inflator.err) {
46  console.log(inflator.msg);
47}
48
49const output = inflator.result;

Sometime you can wish to work with strings. For example, to send stringified objects to server. Pako's deflate detects input data type, and automatically recode strings to utf-8 prior to compress. Inflate has special option, to say compressed data has utf-8 encoding and should be recoded to javascript's utf-16.

1const pako = require('pako');
2
3const test = { my: 'super', puper: [456, 567], awesome: 'pako' };
4
5const compressed = pako.deflate(JSON.stringify(test));
6
7const restored = JSON.parse(pako.inflate(compressed, { to: 'string' }));

Notes

Pako does not contain some specific zlib functions:

• deflate - methods deflateCopy, deflateBound, deflateParams, deflatePending, deflatePrime, deflateTune.
• inflate - methods inflateCopy, inflateMark, inflatePrime, inflateGetDictionary, inflateSync, inflateSyncPoint, inflateUndermine.
• High level inflate/deflate wrappers (classes) may not support some flush modes.

pako for enterprise

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Authors

• Andrey Tupitsin @anrd83
• Vitaly Puzrin @puzrin

Personal thanks to:

• Vyacheslav Egorov (@mraleph) for his awesome tutorials about optimising JS code for v8, IRHydra tool and his advices.
• David Duponchel (@dduponchel) for help with testing.

Original implementation (in C):

• zlib by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.

License

• MIT - all files, except /lib/zlib folder
• ZLIB - /lib/zlib content