compression - 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

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

try:
    from StringIO import StringIO  # Python 2.7
except ImportError:
    from io import StringIO  # Python 3.x
import gzip
out = 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 'x1fx8bx08x00xbdxbexe8Nx02xffx0bxc9xc8,Vx00xa2xdcxccxecTx85xbcxd2xdcxa4xd4"x85xfcxbcTx1dxa0Xx9ezx89BH:Q!'xbfD!?M!xad4xcfx1ex00wxd4xeaxf41x00x00x00'