TechStyle.JsonCompress 1.0.0

TechStyle.JsonCompress

Lossless JSON compression that is still JSON. No dependencies on .NET 8 and later, no binary framing, no code generation. Typically 45–75% smaller, and an exact round trip.

using System.Text.Json.Nodes;
using TechStyle.JsonCompress;

var users = JsonNode.Parse("""
    [{"id":1,"name":"Ada","role":"admin","country":"United Kingdom"},
     {"id":2,"name":"Bob","role":"admin","country":"United Kingdom"},
     {"id":3,"name":"Cy", "role":"user", "country":"United Kingdom"}]
    """);

var small = JsonCompressor.Compress(users);
// {"jc":1,"k":["id","name","role","country"],
//  "d":{"~t":[0,1,2,3],"~e":[0,0,0,2],"~cv":["United Kingdom"],
//       "~r":[[1,"Ada","admin"],[2,"Bob","admin"],[3,"Cy","user"]]}}

JsonCompressor.Decompress(small);   // exactly the array you started with

What it does

JSON spends most of its bytes saying the same things over and over. A thousand records is a thousand copies of every key name; a status column with three possible values is a thousand copies of three short strings; a currency field that is always "GBP" is a thousand copies of one. This writes each of those down once.

The output is still ordinary JSON, so it goes anywhere JSON goes: an HTTP body, a WebSocket frame, a jsonb column, a queue message, a log line.

What it measures

Use it for record sets, logs, time series and API responses. For a small document you already gzip it will not earn its keep — JsonCompressor.Measure will tell you so before you commit.

The rest of the surface

• Stringify / Parse — the same pair at the string level.
• CompressValue<T> / ParseValue<T> — for data that is not already a JsonNode.
• DecompressIfNeeded / IsCompressed — for a boundary you do not fully control.
• Measure — what compression would buy, with and without gzip.
• JsonCompressCodec — options bound once, safe to share across threads.
• Validate / Locate — where a JSON document breaks, with line and column.
• Minify / Beautify — whitespace only.
• TablePack — the columnar idea on its own, with no envelope.

One format, several languages

The wire format is specified in SPEC.md, and a document written here reads correctly in the JavaScript implementation — which is not a claim but a test, run against a corpus that encoder produced.

Full documentation: github.com/eharain/JSON-Compress/tree/main/dotnet

Licence

MIT. Built by Tech Style Ltd.