GZipStream - Compress/Decompress a string

Introduction

This article presents two methods to compress and decompress strings using System.IO.Compression.GZipStream.

Context/Problem

After converting code from VB.NET 1.1 to C#.NET 3.5, I needed to change some code using a third party zip class to GZipStream. Code samples found on the web or on VS help where presenting solutions dealing with FileStream but in this case, a string is given as an input parameter.

So the little challenge was to go from a string to a byte array (byte[]) and vice versa without losing a char nor changing its encoding because I ended up finding that System.Text.Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes()/GetString() previously used in the VB code was not acting properly, resulting in a loss of characters. Plus the Flush() method on GZipStream with the compression option doesn't flush everything...

Tips

So as I found no method transforming a string into a byte[] and vice versa without involving encoding specifications, I ended up with a loop and a cast. If you have a better idea, please tell me so.

And I found out, if you only flush a GZipStream instance and retrieve the data from the underlying stream without closing this GZipStream instance, you miss part of the data.

The Code

Compress/Zip a string:


See full detail: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/GZipStream.aspx

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