pavetheway91 / libdeflate

0.3.1 2026-08-23 16:03 UTC

Requires

• php: >= 7.3.0

MIT

Published on Packagist.org on 2026-08-23 16:10 UTC

Extension name: ext-libdeflate

Supports Zend Thread Safety (ZTS): ✅

Supports non-Thread Safe mode (NTS): ✅

Supported operating systems: no restrictions

Configure flags:

• --with-system-libdeflate Use system libdeflate library

README

Keeping the lights on after pmmp/ext-libdeflate was archived.

PHP bindings for libdeflate, a zlib replacement with significantly better performance.

Installation

Pie

With bundled libdeflate:

pie install pavetheway91/libdeflate

With system libdeflate:

pie install pavetheway91/libdeflate --with-system-libdeflate

Binary packages

Fedora / RHEL / Rocky packages available from Remi's RPM repository

Features

At the time of writing, only libdeflate's compression APIs are implemented.

Performance

Compared to zlib_encode(), a 40% performance improvement can be observed at level 1, rising to 50-70% at level 6 (default), for approximately the same compression ratios. Also, libdeflate_deflate_compress() was observed to sometimes be faster at level 6 compression than zlib_encode() at level 1 compression.

Compression levels

Libdeflate provides compression levels up to 12. At level 12, compression ratio is in the same league as zopfli, but libdeflate wins in speed.

API

<?php

/**
 * Equivalent to zlib_encode($data, ZLIB_ENCODING_RAW, $level)
 * @throws \RuntimeException
 */
function libdeflate_deflate_compress(string $data, int $level = 6) : string;

/**
 * Equivalent to zlib_encode($data, ZLIB_ENCODING_DEFLATE, $level)
 * @throws \RuntimeException
 */
function libdeflate_zlib_compress(string $data, int $level = 6) : string;

/**
 * Equivalent to zlib_encode($data, ZLIB_ENCODING_GZIP, $level)
 * @throws \RuntimeException
 */
function libdeflate_gzip_compress(string $data, int $level = 6) : string;