Which compression method to use in PHP?

Question

I have a large amount of data to move using two PHP scripts: one on the client side using a command line PHP script and other behind Apache. I POST the data to the server si

Answer 1

I am no PHP expert and cannot answer the question posed, but it seems like there is a lot of guessing going on here, and fuzzy information being proffered.

DEFLATE is the name of the compression algorithm that is used by ZLIB, GZIP and others. In theory, GZIP supports alternative compression algorithms, but in practice, there are none.

There is no such thing as "the GZIP algorithm". GZIP uses the DEFLATE algorithm, and puts framing data around the compressed data. With GZIP you can add things like the filename, the time of the file, a CRC, even a comment. This metadata is optional, though, and many gzippers just omit it.

ZLIB is similar, except with a different, more limited set of metadata, and a specific 2-byte header.

This is all in IETF RFCs 1950, 1951, and 1952.

To say that "the gzip algorithm compresses better than DEFLATE" is just nonsense. There is no gzip algorithm. And the algorithm used in the GZIP format is DEFLATE.