scala-smaz is a scala port of the Smaz short string compression algorithm by Salvatore Sanfilippo and released as a C library at: https://github.com/antirez/smaz

The library supports both ASCII and UTF-8 characters. But only ASCII characters get compressed. When used on short word sequences the compression is about 30% - 40%. UTF-8 characters wont get compressed and therefore your data should consist of mostly ASCII characters.

Add the following dependency to your build file:

libraryDependencies += "com.scalableminds.smaz" %% "scala-smaz" % "1.0.2"

The library is compiled against scala 2.11.

The library comes with a predifined codebook. A codebook defines which character sequences get compressed by replacing them with single byte values. The default codebook is supposed to compress short english sentences or word sequences. You can use it in the following way:

import com.scalableminds.smaz.DefaultSmaz

val testString = "this is a simple test"
val compressed: Array[Byte] = DefaultSmaz.compress(testString)
val uncompressed: String    = DefaultSmaz.decompress(compressed)
assert(testString == uncompressed)

If the strings you want to compress are not short sequences of english words, you can improve the compression performance by creating your own codebook. E.g. you could create a codebook that is speciallized in compressing single english words:

import com.scalableminds.smaz.{CodeBookCooker, SmazWithCustomCodeBook}

// Choose as many as possible (but keep in mind, the longer and more examples you got, the longer the 
// training is going to take)
val testStrings = Array("hello", "world", "compress", "me", "as", "good", "as", "possible")

// train the compression library on the test strings. This might take a while
val reversedCodeBook = CodeBookCooker.tuneOn(testStrings)
val codeBook = CodeBookCooker.codeBookFromReverse(reversedCodeBook)

// Create your own compression object
object WordSmaz extends SmazWithCustomCodeBook{
  val CODEBOOK = codeBook
  val REVERSE_CODEBOOK = reversedCodeBook
}

//Use the custom compression
WordSmaz.compress("hello")

The test strings should resemble the distribution of character sequences of the data you want to compress.

MIT. Please have a look at the LICENSE file.