The snappy-java is a Java port of the snappy http://code.google.com/p/snappy/, a fast C++ compresser/decompresser developed by Google.
- Fast compression/decompression tailored to 64-bit CPU architecture.
- JNI-based implementation to achieve comparable performance to the native C++ version.
- Although snappy-java uses JNI, it can be used safely with multiple class loaders (e.g. Tomcat, etc.).
- Portable across various operating systems; Snappy-java contains native libraries built for Window/Mac/Linux (64-bit). snappy-java loads one of these libraries according to your machine environment (It looks system properties,
os.nameandos.arch). - Simple usage. Add the snappy-java-(version).jar file to your classpath. Then call compression/decompression methods in
org.xerial.snappy.Snappy. - Framing-format support (Since 1.1.0 version)
- Apache License Version 2.0. Free for both commercial and non-commercial use.
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Snappy's main target is very high-speed compression/decompression with reasonable compression size. So the compression ratio of snappy-java is modest and about the same as
LZF(ranging 20%-100% according to the dataset). -
Here are some benchmark results, comparing snappy-java and the other compressors
LZO-java/LZF/QuickLZ/Gzip/Bzip2. Thanks Tatu Saloranta @cotowncoder for providing the benchmark suite. -
The benchmark result indicates snappy-java is the fastest compreesor/decompressor in Java:
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The decompression speed is twice as fast as the others:
The current stable version is available from here:
- Release version: http://code.google.com/p/snappy-java/downloads/list
- Snapshot version (the latest beta version): https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/org/xerial/snappy/snappy-java/
For Maven user, see pom.xml example.
First, import org.xerial.snapy.Snappy in your Java code:
import org.xerial.snappy.Snappy;Then use Snappy.compress(byte[]) and Snappy.uncompress(byte[]):
String input = "Hello snappy-java! Snappy-java is a JNI-based wrapper of "
+ "Snappy, a fast compresser/decompresser.";
byte[] compressed = Snappy.compress(input.getBytes("UTF-8"));
byte[] uncompressed = Snappy.uncompress(compressed);
String result = new String(uncompressed, "UTF-8");
System.out.println(result);In addition, high-level methods (Snappy.compress(String), Snappy.compress(float[] ..) etc. ) and low-level ones (e.g. Snappy.rawCompress(.. ), Snappy.rawUncompress(..), etc.), which minimize memory copies, can be used.
Stream-based compressor/decompressor SnappyFramedOutputStream/SnappyFramedInputStream are also available for reading/writing large data sets.
- See also Javadoc API
If you have snappy-java-(VERSION).jar in the current directory, use -classpath option as follows:
$ javac -classpath ".;snappy-java-(VERSION).jar" Sample.java # in Windows
or
$ javac -classpath ".:snappy-java-(VERSION).jar" Sample.java # in Mac or Linux
- Snappy-java is available from Maven's central repository: http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/xerial/snappy/snappy-java
Add the following dependency to your pom.xml:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.xerial.snappy</groupId>
<artifactId>snappy-java</artifactId>
<version>(version)</version>
<type>jar</type>
<scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>
Post bug reports or feature request to the Issue Tracker: https://github.com/xerial/snappy-java/issues
Public discussion forum is here: <http://groups.google.com/group/xerial?hl=en Xerial Public Discussion Group>
See the installation instruction. Building from the source code is an option when your OS platform and CPU architecture is not supported. To build snappy-java, you need Git, JDK (1.6 or higher), Maven (3.x or higher is required), g++ compiler (mingw in Windows) etc.
$ git clone https://github.com/xerial/snappy-java.git
$ cd snappy-java
$ make
When building on Solaris use
$ gmake
A file target/snappy-java-$(version).jar is the product additionally containing the native library built for your platform.
snappy-java tries to static link libstdc++ to increase the availability for various Linux versions. However, standard distributions of 64-bit Linux OS rarely provide libstdc++ compiled with -fPIC option. I currently uses custom g++ compiled with the following options:
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local --with-gmp=$HOME/local --with-mpfr=$HOME/local --with-mpc=$HOME/local --with-ppl=$HOME/local --with-cloog=$HOME/local CXXFLAGS=-fPIC CFLAGS=-fPIC
This g++ build enables static linking of libstdc++. For more infomation on building GCC, see GCC's home page.
The Makefile contains rules for cross-compiling the native library for other platforms so that the snappy-java JAR can support multiple platforms. For example, to build the native libraries for x86 Linux, x86 and x86-64 Windows, and soft- and hard-float ARM:
$ make linux32 win32 win64 linux-arm linux-armhf
If you append snappy to the line above, it will also build the native library for the current platform and then build the snappy-java JAR (containing all native libraries built so far).
Of course, you must first have the necessary cross-compilers and development libraries installed for each target CPU and OS. For example, on Ubuntu 12.04 for x86-64, install the following packages for each target:
- linux32:
sudo apt-get install g++-multilib libc6-dev-i386 lib32stdc++6 - win32:
sudo apt-get install g++-mingw-w64-i686 - win64:
sudo apt-get install g++-mingw-w64-x86-64 - arm:
sudo apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabi - armhf:
sudo apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf
Unfortunately, cross-compiling for Mac OS X is not currently possible; you must compile within OS X.
If you are using Mac and openjdk7 (or higher), use the following option:
$ make native LIBNAME=libsnappyjava.dylib
Simply put the snappy-java's jar to WEB-INF/lib folder of your web application. Usual JNI-library specific problem no longer exists since snappy-java version 1.0.3 or higher can be loaded by multiple class loaders.
Snappy-java is developed by Taro L. Saito. Twitter @taroleo