Compression/Decompression string with C#

Question

I am newbie in .net. I am doing compression and decompression string in C#. There is a XML and I am converting in string and after that I am doing compression and decompression.There is no compilation error in my code except when I decompression my code and return my string, its returning only half of the XML.

Below is my code, please correct me where I am wrong.

Code:

class Program
{
    public static string Zip(string value)
    {
        //Transform string into byte[]  
        byte[] byteArray = new byte[value.Length];
        int indexBA = 0;
        foreach (char item in value.ToCharArray())
        {
            byteArray[indexBA++] = (byte)item;
        }

        //Prepare for compress
        System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
        System.IO.Compression.GZipStream sw = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(ms, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress);

        //Compress
        sw.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
        //Close, DO NOT FLUSH cause bytes will go missing...
        sw.Close();

        //Transform byte[] zip data to string
        byteArray = ms.ToArray();
        System.Text.StringBuilder sB = new System.Text.StringBuilder(byteArray.Length);
        foreach (byte item in byteArray)
        {
            sB.Append((char)item);
        }
        ms.Close();
        sw.Dispose();
        ms.Dispose();
        return sB.ToString();
    }

    public static string UnZip(string value)
    {
        //Transform string into byte[]
        byte[] byteArray = new byte[value.Length];
        int indexBA = 0;
        foreach (char item in value.ToCharArray())
        {
            byteArray[indexBA++] = (byte)item;
        }

        //Prepare for decompress
        System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream(byteArray);
        System.IO.Compression.GZipStream sr = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(ms,
            System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Decompress);

        //Reset variable to collect uncompressed result
        byteArray = new byte[byteArray.Length];

        //Decompress
        int rByte = sr.Read(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);

        //Transform byte[] unzip data to string
        System.Text.StringBuilder sB = new System.Text.StringBuilder(rByte);
        //Read the number of bytes GZipStream red and do not a for each bytes in
        //resultByteArray;
        for (int i = 0; i < rByte; i++)
        {
            sB.Append((char)byteArray[i]);
        }
        sr.Close();
        ms.Close();
        sr.Dispose();
        ms.Dispose();
        return sB.ToString();
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(@"D:\RSP.xml");
        string val = doc.ToString(SaveOptions.DisableFormatting);
        val = Zip(val);
        val = UnZip(val);
    }
} 

My XML size is 63KB.

Answer 1

The code to compress/decompress a string

public static void CopyTo(Stream src, Stream dest) {
    byte[] bytes = new byte[4096];

    int cnt;

    while ((cnt = src.Read(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)) != 0) {
        dest.Write(bytes, 0, cnt);
    }
}

public static byte[] Zip(string str) {
    var bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(str);

    using (var msi = new MemoryStream(bytes))
    using (var mso = new MemoryStream()) {
        using (var gs = new GZipStream(mso, CompressionMode.Compress)) {
            //msi.CopyTo(gs);
            CopyTo(msi, gs);
        }

        return mso.ToArray();
    }
}

public static string Unzip(byte[] bytes) {
    using (var msi = new MemoryStream(bytes))
    using (var mso = new MemoryStream()) {
        using (var gs = new GZipStream(msi, CompressionMode.Decompress)) {
            //gs.CopyTo(mso);
            CopyTo(gs, mso);
        }

        return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(mso.ToArray());
    }
}

static void Main(string[] args) {
    byte[] r1 = Zip("StringStringStringStringStringStringStringStringStringStringStringStringStringString");
    string r2 = Unzip(r1);
}

Remember that Zip returns a byte[], while Unzip returns a string. If you want a string from Zip you can Base64 encode it (for example by using Convert.ToBase64String(r1)) (the result of Zip is VERY binary! It isn't something you can print to the screen or write directly in an XML)

The version suggested is for .NET 2.0, for .NET 4.0 use the MemoryStream.CopyTo.

IMPORTANT: The compressed contents cannot be written to the output stream until the GZipStream knows that it has all of the input (i.e., to effectively compress it needs all of the data). You need to make sure that you Dispose() of the GZipStream before inspecting the output stream (e.g., mso.ToArray()). This is done with the using() { } block above. Note that the GZipStream is the innermost block and the contents are accessed outside of it. The same goes for decompressing: Dispose() of the GZipStream before attempting to access the data.