Hello my dear friends.

Today we will lear about Zopfli and how you can use it with Ruby.

What is Zopfli?

Zopfli Compression Algorithm is a new zlib (gzip, deflate) compatible compressor, which at 3.7-8.3% more efficient than standard zlib library at the maximum level of compression. Initially the algorithm was designed for lossless compression WebP format, but it can be applied to other content.

The new algorithm is a standard “deflate” algorithm, so it is compatible with the zlib and gzip, and decompression of data is already supported by all browsers. Just connect zopfli to a server (for example, it can be used with a web server Nginx without changes in the module gzip, simply specifying a new “compressor”).

However, compression using Zopfli requires about 100 times more resources than gzip (~100x slower), but the decompression is done in the browser at the same speed.

Ruby and Zopfli

I wrote zopfli gem - zopfli-ffi. You can use this gem to work with zopfli (it can work with MRI, JRuby and RBX). This gem have only one main method - compress. You should provide file, which you want to compress and file, which should store compressed result.

uncompressed_file = 'spec/fixtures/test.txt'
compressed_file = 'spec/fixtures/test.txt.gz'

Zopfli.compress(uncompressed_file, compressed_file)

You can define format of compression (:zlib is default):

Zopfli.compress(uncompressed_file, compressed_file, :zlib)
Zopfli.compress(uncompressed_file, compressed_file, :deflate)
Zopfli.compress(uncompressed_file, compressed_file, :gzip)

Also you can define number of iterations for compression (greater number - better compression, but slower compression time; default = 15):

Zopfli.compress(uncompressed_file, compressed_file, :zlib, 15) # default format
Zopfli.compress(uncompressed_file, compressed_file, :deflate, 5)
Zopfli.compress(uncompressed_file, compressed_file, :zlib, 25)

Benchmarking

Let’s look at what time work and the result of compression will have Zopfli and ZLib. For this benchmark I created little Ruby script:

require 'zopfli_ffi'
require 'zlib'
require 'benchmark'

in_dir = File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__))
out_dir = File.expand_path(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "../tmp/"))

Benchmark.bm(7) do |x|

  x.report("Gzip:") do
    Zlib::GzipWriter.open("#{out_dir}/1.jpg.gz") do |gz|
      gz.write IO.binread("#{in_dir}/1.jpg")
    end
  end

  x.report("Zopfli (5 iterations):") do
    Zopfli.compress("#{in_dir}/1.jpg", "#{out_dir}/1_5.jpg.zfl", :zlib, 5)
  end

  x.report("Zopfli (50 iterations):") do
    Zopfli.compress("#{in_dir}/1.jpg", "#{out_dir}/1_50.jpg.zfl", :zlib, 50)
  end

end

In the result we have such execution time:

$ bundle exec ruby spec/benchmark.rb
                        user        system      total         real
Gzip:                   0.600000    0.190000    0.790000      (0.944868)
Zopfli (5 iterations):  124.330000  20.880000   145.210000    (145.643881)
Zopfli (50 iterations): 558.800000  152.280000  711.080000    (713.134134)

As you can see, Zopfli in ~150 times slower, than Zlib. Also as you can see execution time grows, if we increase number of iterations for compression.

But what about files size? This is result:

vagrant 11578722 Oct 29 18:52 1.jpg
vagrant  9807633 Oct 29 18:05 1.jpg.gz
vagrant  9747611 Oct 29 18:07 1_5.jpg.zfl
vagrant  9733181 Oct 29 18:19 1_50.jpg.zfl

As we can see, Zlib reduced file size for 15.29%. Zopfli with 5 iterations reduced file size for 15.814% and with 5 iterations reduced file size for 15.939%. Difference is not too big. So, why you even will consider to use Zopfli?

Use cases

Zopfli is not good for real-time compression, as it can do Zlib. What is why it is not good idea to activate it for Nginx (as I wrote at begin of the article).

Zopfli can be very useful for systems, which prepare compressed files for distribution (static HTML pages, JS/CSS/etc files) by HTTP protocol. For example, jQuery CDN for distribution of a jQuery library can use gigabytes of network traffic (I don’t know real numbers). Zopfli can save huge amount of a network traffic and increase speed of distribution of content, because even 1% is really huge number in this case.

Summary

Zopfli is a zlib (gzip, deflate) compatible compressor, that can better compress your files (3.7-8.3%). However, you should pay for this very slow compression time (the decompression is done in the browser at the same speed).

That’s all folks! Thank you for reading till the end.