gzopen

David Gero dave at havidave dot com (2011-09-06 14:02:19)

gzopen("php://output","wb") doesn't work on a web server, nor does fopen("compress.zlib://php://output","wb").

Here is a snippet to gzip a file and output it on the fly, without using a temporary file, without reading the file into memory, and without reading the file more than once:

<?php
$fin = fopen($file, "rb");
if ($fin !== FALSE) {
    $fout = fopen("php://output", "wb");
    if ($fout !== FALSE) {
    // write gzip header
    fwrite($fout, "\x1F\x8B\x08\x08".pack("V", filemtime($file))."\0\xFF", 10);
    // write the original file name
    $oname = str_replace("\0", "", basename($file));
    fwrite($fout, $oname."\0", 1+strlen($oname));
    // add the deflate filter using default compression level
    $fltr = stream_filter_append($fout, "zlib.deflate", STREAM_FILTER_WRITE, -1);
    // set up the CRC32 hashing context
    $hctx = hash_init("crc32b");
    // turn off the time limit
    if (!ini_get("safe_mode")) set_time_limit(0);
    $con = TRUE;
    $fsize = 0;
    while (($con !== FALSE) && !feof($fin)) {
        // deflate works best with buffers >32K
        $con = fread($fin, 64 * 1024);
        if ($con !== FALSE) {
        hash_update($hctx, $con);
        $clen = strlen($con);
        $fsize += $clen;
        fwrite($fout, $con, $clen);
        }
    }
    // remove the deflate filter
    stream_filter_remove($fltr);
    // write the CRC32 value
    // hash_final is a string, not an integer
    $crc = hash_final($hctx, TRUE);
    // need to reverse the hash_final string so it's little endian
    fwrite($fout, $crc[3].$crc[2].$crc[1].$crc[0], 4);
    // write the original uncompressed file size
    fwrite($fout, pack("V", $fsize), 4);
    fclose($fout);
    }
    fclose($fin);
}
?>

plasma (2008-09-05 20:06:04)

This worked unstable for me under high load (50+ files per second):

<?php
    $gz = gzopen ( $file, 'w9' );
    gzwrite ( $gz, $content );
    gzclose ( $gz );
?>

The following works fine:

<?php
    $f = fopen ( $file, 'w' );
    fwrite ( $f, gzcompress ( $content, 9 ) );
    fclose ( $f );
?>

katzlbtjunk at hotmail dot com (2008-04-23 12:15:00)

WARNING gzopen and gzread have a major disadvantage. They makes NO checksum and NO length verification of the gzipped data and discard this valuable information. This should be documented here.

rob at digital-crocus dot com (2005-06-01 05:28:23)

dtorop932 at hotmail dot com's comments, according to my tests, is incorrect. That code wishes to download the entire file before parsing, which is inconvinient. The wget method works though.

pentek_imre at mailbox dot hu (2005-01-29 10:36:31)

Be aware that when opening a remote file on a http server the gzopen will return by default false after 120 seconds waiting to any answer.

dtorop932 at hotmail dot com (2004-10-21 12:04:18)

RE dubious's comment: "Being able to read gzip streams from ftp and http is near the top of my personal wishlist at the moment..."

One way to read a gzip stream over http is to daisychain stream wrappers, e.g.:

<?
$fp = fopen("compress.zlib://http://some.website.org/example.gz", "r");
?>

-delete-this-part-dubious at 2xtreme dot net (2002-01-02 19:22:08)

"On the fly" gunzipping actually DOES seem to work - it just appears that only LOCAL streams/files (including php://stdin) can be accessed for some reason. I THINK (but have not yet tested) that you could similarly gzopen "php://stdout" and pass a stream of gzipped data to the browser (when run from a web page) or console (when run standalone) through there.
I HAVE tested scripts from the command line like:
wget -q -O- ftp://some.host.net/pub/some_gzip_file.gz | php gunzip_stuff.php
where gunzip_stuff.php would be a script that gzopened "php://stdin" and did gzgets from that stream, and it seems to work fine, but that obviously doesn't help someone wanting to grab gzipped streams from remote sites from a web-based script.
Being able to read gzip streams from ftp and http is near the top of my personal wishlist at the moment...