Compression-Engine

A concept project to learn how the Gzip algorithm works from the ground up. Supports multiple lossless compression engines, CLI tools for local file compression/decompression, and an HTTP server that accepts compressed payloads and decompresses it.

🔧 Supported Algorithms

• Huffman
• LZSS (sliding-window, parallel block processing)
• Deflate (LZSS + dynamic/fixed Huffman coding)
• Gzip (DEFLATE + Gzip header & trailer)

🚀 Installation

git clone https://github.com/FitrahHaque/Compression-Engine.git
cd Compression-Engine
go mod tidy
go build -o shrink .

(Optional) Install into your ~/bin for easy CLI access:

make install

Make sure ~/bin is on your PATH:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Makefile Options

Target	Description
build	Build the shrink binary (output: shrink.o)
install	Build and install shrink to ~/bin
clean	Remove the built binary
dev	Install and run a Huffman compress/decompress test
compress	Install and run LZSS compression on b.txt
decompress	Run LZSS decompression on b.txt.shk (after compress)
deflate	Install and run Flate compression on f.txt
inflate	Run Flate decompression on f.txt.shk (after deflate)
gzip	Install and run Gzip compression/decompression on g.txt
server	Install and run HTTP server for Gzip decompression on s.txt

🖥️ Local CLI Usage

Compress a file:

shrink --compress --algorithm=huffman   --outfileext=.huf example.txt
shrink --compress --algorithm=lzss      --outfileext=.lzs example.txt
shrink --compress --algorithm=deflate   --outfileext=.dfl example.txt
shrink --compress --algorithm=gzip      --outfileext=.gz  example.txt

Decompress a file:

shrink --decompress --algorithm=huffman example.txt.shk
shrink --decompress --algorithm=lzss    example.txt.shk
shrink --decompress --algorithm=deflate example.txt.shk
shrink --decompress --algorithm=gzip    example.txt.shk

🌐 HTTP Server Mode

Spin up a one-request server that accepts a compressed POST body, writes out the decompressed payload, and then shuts down:

shrink --server \
  --serverPort=8081 \
  --algorithm=gzip \
  somefile.txt

Client will POST somefile.txt (compressed with your chosen algorithm).
Server auto-decompresses and writes it to server-decompressed.txt.
Server shuts down after handling the single request.