Everything you need to handle HTTP message body content-encoding
npm install http-encoding> _Part of HTTP Toolkit: powerful tools for building, testing & debugging HTTP(S)_
Everything you need to handle HTTP message body content-encoding
This package includes methods to decode & encode all commonly used HTTP content encodings, in a consistent format, usable in a wide range of Node.js versions and browsers. Both buffer & streaming APIs are available.
The supported codecs are:
* Gzip
* Raw deflate (with or without a zlib wrapper)
* Brotli
* Zstandard
* Base64
All encoding names are case-insensitive (although lowercase is generally standard). The 'identity', 'amz-1.0', 'none', 'text', 'binary', 'utf8' and 'utf-8' encodings are all supported as no-op encodings, passed through with no en/decoding at all. Only 'identity' is standard, but the others are all in common use regardless.
Found a codec used in real-world HTTP that isn't supported? Open an issue!
The library includes two general methods for de/encoding buffers:
Takes an encoded body buffer and encoding (in the format of a standard HTTP content-encoding header) and returns a promise for a decoded buffer, using the zero to many buffers specified in the header.
The input buffer can be any Uint8Array including a Node Buffer (a subclass of Uint8Array). A node-compatible buffer is always returned.
If any encoding is unrecognized or unavailable then this method will throw an exception.
A decodeBufferSync method is also available for some use cases, but not recommended, as it's less performant and cannot support some encodings (Brotli or Zstandard).
Takes a raw body buffer and a single encoding (a valid HTTP content-encoding name) and returns a promise for an encoded buffer, using the zero to many buffers specified in the header.
The input buffer can be any Uint8Array (including a Node Buffer, which is a Uint8Array subclass) or an ArrayBuffer. A node-compatible buffer is always returned.
If any encoding is unrecognized or unavailable then this method will throw an exception.
This library also exports consistent async methods to compress and decompress each of the codecs directly:
* gzip
* gunzip
* deflate
* deflateRaw
* inflate
* inflateRaw
* brotliCompress
* brotliDecompress
* zstdCompress
* zstdDecompress
* encodeBase64
* decodeBase64
Each method accepts a buffer and returns a promise for a buffer.
This library also supports streaming encoding and decoding, returning web-standard TransformStream instances. This uses native CompressionStream/DecompressionStream where available (all modern browsers and Node 18+).
Takes an encoding (in the format of a standard HTTP content-encoding header) and returns a TransformStream that decodes data with the specified encoding(s), or null if no transformation is needed (identity encoding or undefined).
The encoding can be a string (e.g. 'gzip' or 'gzip, base64'), an array of strings, or undefined.
Takes an encoding (a valid HTTP content-encoding name) and returns a TransformStream that encodes data with the specified encoding(s), or null if no transformation is needed (identity encoding or undefined).
The encoding can be a string (e.g. 'gzip' or 'gzip, base64'), an array of strings, or undefined.
Each codec can also be stream-decoded explicitly with the corresponding method:
* createGzipStream
* createGunzipStream
* createDeflateStream
* createInflateStream
* createDeflateRawStream
* createInflateRawStream
* createBrotliCompressStream
* createBrotliDecompressStream
* createZstdCompressStream
* createZstdDecompressStream
* createBase64EncodeStream
* createBase64DecodeStream
To use this in a browser, you'll need to use a bundler (e.g. Webpack) that can include standard Node.js polyfill packages, you may need to install those polyfill packages, and your bundler needs to support bundling WebAssembly (e.g. Webpack v4+).
In Webpack v4 this should all work automatically. In Webpack v5 and most other builders this will require explicit dependencies and configuration. See this package's own test webpack config and dev dependencies for a working example.
Brotli and Zstandard are only supported in runtime environments that support WebAssembly. All WebAssembly packages are loaded on-demand and only when native methods (e.g. Node's zlib.brotli*) are not available.