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LZ4

LZ4 is a very fast compression and decompression algorithm. This nodejs module provides a Javascript implementation of the decoder as well as native bindings to the LZ4 functions. Nodejs Streams are also supported for compression and decompression.

NB. Version 0.2 does not support the legacy format, only the one as of "LZ4 Streaming Format 1.4". Use version 0.1 if required.

Build

With NodeJS:

git clone https://github.com/pierrec/node-lz4.git
cd node-lz4
git submodule update --init --recursive
npm install

Install

With NodeJS:

npm install lz4

Within the browser, using build/lz4.js:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/lz4.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
// Nodejs-like Buffer built-in
var Buffer = require('buffer').Buffer
var LZ4 = require('lz4')

// Some data to be compressed
var data = 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.'
data += data
// LZ4 can only work on Buffers
var input = Buffer.from(data)
// Initialize the output buffer to its maximum length based on the input data
var output = Buffer.alloc( LZ4.encodeBound(input.length) )

// block compression (no archive format)
var compressedSize = LZ4.encodeBlock(input, output)
// remove unnecessary bytes
output = output.slice(0, compressedSize)

console.log( "compressed data", output )

// block decompression (no archive format)
var uncompressed = Buffer.alloc(input.length)
var uncompressedSize = LZ4.decodeBlock(output, uncompressed)
uncompressed = uncompressed.slice(0, uncompressedSize)

console.log( "uncompressed data", uncompressed )
</script>

From github cloning, after having made sure that node and node-gyp are properly installed:

npm i
node-gyp rebuild

See below for more LZ4 functions.

Usage

Encoding

There are 2 ways to encode:

Asynchronous encoding

First, create an LZ4 encoding NodeJS stream with LZ4#createEncoderStream(options).

The stream can then encode any data piped to it. It will emit a data event on each encoded chunk, which can be saved into an output stream.

The following example shows how to encode a file test into test.lz4.

var fs = require('fs')
var lz4 = require('lz4')

var encoder = lz4.createEncoderStream()

var input = fs.createReadStream('test')
var output = fs.createWriteStream('test.lz4')

input.pipe(encoder).pipe(output)

Synchronous encoding

Read the data into memory and feed it to LZ4#encode(input[, options]) to decode an LZ4 stream.

var fs = require('fs')
var lz4 = require('lz4')

var input = fs.readFileSync('test')
var output = lz4.encode(input)

fs.writeFileSync('test.lz4', output)

Decoding

There are 2 ways to decode:

Asynchronous decoding

First, create an LZ4 decoding NodeJS stream with LZ4#createDecoderStream().

The stream can then decode any data piped to it. It will emit a data event on each decoded sequence, which can be saved into an output stream.

The following example shows how to decode an LZ4 compressed file test.lz4 into test.

var fs = require('fs')
var lz4 = require('lz4')

var decoder = lz4.createDecoderStream()

var input = fs.createReadStream('test.lz4')
var output = fs.createWriteStream('test')

input.pipe(decoder).pipe(output)

Synchronous decoding

Read the data into memory and feed it to LZ4#decode(input) to produce an LZ4 stream.

var fs = require('fs')
var lz4 = require('lz4')

var input = fs.readFileSync('test.lz4')
var output = lz4.decode(input)

fs.writeFileSync('test', output)

Block level encoding/decoding

In some cases, it is useful to be able to manipulate an LZ4 block instead of an LZ4 stream. The functions to decode and encode are therefore exposed as:

Blocks do not have any magic number and are provided as is. It is useful to store somewhere the size of the original input for decoding. LZ4#encodeBlockHC() is not available as pure Javascript.

How it works

Restrictions / Issues

License

MIT