Compressing Data On The Fly

[awohld]

I'm making a script that will take huge log files (some times 200MB+) and store them in a directory with a time encoded name and compressed. I got the program to store and rename the files but I'm sort of confused on how to compress them. I'm encoding the file names with epoch time but right now the are uncompressed. I want them to be compressed when I store them.

Here is my code so far:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;
use DBI;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

my $upload_dir = "/home/local/upload";

my $query = new CGI;

my $filename = $query->param("filename");
my $to = $query->param("to");
my $from = $query->param("from");
my $expire = $query->param("expire");
my $comments = $query->param("comments");

my $uldate = time;

my $expdate;

if ($expire !~m/^(1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14)$/)
{
 print "Content-type: text/html\n\nDon't tamper with me!";
 die;
}
if ($expire eq 1) {$expdate = $uldate + 86400;}
if ($expire eq 2) {$expdate = $uldate + 172800;}
if ($expire eq 3) {$expdate = $uldate + 259200;}

$filename =~ s/.*[\/\\](.*)/$1/;

##Start database connections###############################
my $database = "databox";
my $db_server = "localhost";
my $user = "user";
my $password = "pass";

##Connect to database, insert statement, & disconnect #####
my $sth;
my $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:$database:$db_server",$user,$passwor
+d);

my $statement = "INSERT INTO databox (filename,data_to,data_from,comme
+nts,uldate,expdate) VALUES (?,?,?,?,?,?)";

   $sth = $dbh->prepare($statement) or die "Couldn't prepare the query
+: ".$DBI::errstr;

my $rv = $sth->execute($filename,$to,$from,$comments,$uldate,$expdate)
+ or die "Couldn't execute query: ".$DBI::errstr;

   $sth->finish;
   $dbh->disconnect;   

###########################################################
my $upload_filehandle = $query->upload("filename");

open UPLOADFILE, ">$upload_dir/$uldate";

binmode UPLOADFILE;

while ( <$upload_filehandle> )
 {
   print UPLOADFILE;
 }

close UPLOADFILE;

I need some direction on how I should compress the file. I looked at Compress::Zlib and think I should use this module.

I'm not too sure from the documentation on Compress::Zlib on how to apply this to my code. How should I integrate Compress::Zlib into my code? I need to apply Compress::Zlib to compress the log file before it's saved on the server, and do it on the fly.

I'm guessing I should change:

my $upload_filehandle = $query->upload("filename");

open UPLOADFILE, ">$upload_dir/$uldate";

binmode UPLOADFILE;

while ( <$upload_filehandle> )
 {
   print UPLOADFILE;
 }

To

my $upload_filehandle = $query->upload("filename");

open UPLOADFILE, ">$upload_dir/$uldate";

binmode UPLOADFILE;

my $x = deflateInit()
       or die "Cannot create a deflation stream\n" ;

my ($output, $status) ;


while ( <$upload_filehandle> )
 {
        ($output, $status) = $x->deflate($upload_filehandle) ;
    
        $status == Z_OK
            or die "deflation failed\n" ;

   print UPLOADFILE;
 }

I'm not really sure about what to do.

READMORE tags added by Arunbear

[Zaxo]

gaal++ has given you my favorite solution to this. Here's detail of how to use it:

use PerlIO::gzip;
open UPLOADFILE, '>:gzip', "$upload_dir/$uldate" or die $!;
# . . .

If you wish, you can add the gzip layer with binmode, instead.

[gaal]

And in reading,

open my $fh, '<:gzip(autopop)', $file or die $!; This transparently falls back on ungzipped where the file is not compressed. There's a warning in the docs about using it, but in many cases it's an excellent tool.

[gaal]

Check out the cuspy PerlIO::gzip (and PerlIO::via in general).