 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Controlling PHP Output: Caching and compressing dynamic pages
Using Output Control to compress PHP output
You need the Zlib extension compiled in PHP4 to compress output. If needed,
see the Zlib extension in the PHP documentation for install instructions.
First of all, initialize output buffering:
<?php
ob_start();
ob_implicit_flush(0);
?>
Then, generate all the content using print, echo, or whatever
you want. For example:
<?php
print("Hey this is a compressed output!");
?>
After the page is generated, we go back to the output using:
<?php
$contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
?>
Then, we have to check if the browser supports compressed
data. If so, the browser sends a ACCEPT_ENCODING HTTP header to the
webserver in the request. We can check the variable $HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING
and check for "gzip, deflate":
<?php
if(ereg('gzip, deflate',$HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING)) {
// Generation of Gzipped content
} else {
echo $contents;
}
?>
That's simple, structured and clean enough to use. Let's see
how we generate gzipped output:
(Taken from php.net)
<?php
// Tell the browser that they are going to get gzip data
// Of course, you already checked if they support gzip or x-gzip
// and if they support x-gzip, you'd change the header to say
// x-gzip instead, right?
header("Content-Encoding: gzip");
// Display the header of the gzip file
// Thanks ck@medienkombinat.de!
// Only display this once
echo "\x1f\x8b\x08\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00";
// Figure out the size and CRC of the original for later
$Size = strlen($contents);
$Crc = crc32($contents);
// Compress the data
$contents = gzcompress($contents, 9);
// We can't just output it here, since the CRC is messed up.
// If I try to "echo $contents" at this point, the compressed
// data is sent, but not completely. There are four bytes at
// the end that are a CRC. Three are sent. The last one is
// left in limbo. Also, if we "echo $contents", then the next
// byte we echo will not be sent to the client. I am not sure
// if this is a bug in 4.0.2 or not, but the best way to avoid
// this is to put the correct CRC at the end of the compressed
// data. (The one generated by gzcompress looks WAY wrong.)
// This will stop Opera from crashing, gunzip will work, and
// other browsers won't keep loading indefinately.
//
// Strip off the old CRC (it's there, but it won't be displayed
// all the way -- very odd)
$contents = substr($contents, 0, strlen($contents) - 4);
// Show only the compressed data
echo $contents;
// Output the CRC, then the size of the original
gzip_PrintFourChars($Crc);
gzip_PrintFourChars($Size);
// Done. You can append further data by gzcompressing
// another string and reworking the CRC and Size stuff for
// it too. Repeat until done.
function gzip_PrintFourChars($Val) {
for ($i = 0; $i < 4; $i ++) {
echo chr($Val % 256);
$Val = floor($Val / 256);
}
}
?>
