How do I gzip compress a string in Python?

If you want to produce a complete gzip-compatible binary string, with the header etc, you could use gzip.GzipFile together with StringIO:

try:    from StringIO import StringIO  # Python 2.7except ImportError:    from io import StringIO  # Python 3.ximport gzipout = StringIO()with gzip.GzipFile(fileobj=out, mode="w") as f:  f.write("This is mike number one, isn't this a lot of fun?")out.getvalue()# returns '\x1f\x8b\x08\x00\xbd\xbe\xe8N\x02\xff\x0b\xc9\xc8,V\x00\xa2\xdc\xcc\xecT\x85\xbc\xd2\xdc\xa4\xd4"\x85\xfc\xbcT\x1d\xa0X\x9ez\x89B\tH:Q!\'\xbfD!?M!\xad4\xcf\x1e\x00w\xd4\xea\xf41\x00\x00\x00'

The easiest way is the zlib encoding:

compressed_value = s.encode("zlib")

Then you decompress it with:

plain_string_again = compressed_value.decode("zlib")

Python3 version of Sven Marnach's 2011 answer:

import gzipexampleString = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijmortenpunnerudengelstadrocksklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvabcdefghijklmnopqrstuv123'compressed_value = gzip.compress(bytes(exampleString, 'utf-8'))plain_string_again = gzip.decompress(compressed_value)