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Compression Streams

Category

JavaScript

Type

New or changed feature

Status

Enabled by default (Chrome 80)

Intent stage

Prepare to ship

Summary

Provides a means of performing gzip and deflate compression from JavaScript using streams. This covers two interfaces: CompressionStream and DecompressionStream.

Motivation

It is possible to compress stream data without this feature, but common libraries like zlib are complex to use. CompressionStream makes it easy for developers to do this, and avoids the need to bundle a compressor with their application.

Standards & signals

• Specification: https://ricea.github.io/compression/
• Firefox: Positive — Comments are generally positive, but a formal position has not been reached yet.
• Safari: No signal
• Web developers: Positive — Most responses are positive. Many developers want zstd or brotli support. A minority of developers question the need for the API.
• Tracking bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=999091

Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TovyqqeC3HoO0A4UUBKiCyhZlQSl7jM_F7KbWjK2Gcs/edit

Samples: https://googlechromelabs-unarchiver.glitch.me/

Explainers: https://github.com/ricea/compressstream-explainer/blob/master/README.md

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