Compress Network Traffic

Install Dependencies

Because the PHP extension uses the MongoDB C driver to implement network compression, you must install the required dependencies for the C driver. To view these dependencies, see Install Dependencies in the C driver documentation.

Specify Compression Algorithms

To enable compression for the connection to your MongoDB deployment, use the compressors connection option and specify the compression algorithms you want to use. You can do this in two ways:

• Pass the algorithms as an argument to the MongoDB\Client constructor.

• Specify the algorithms in your connection string.

The following example shows how to specify Snappy, Zlib, and Zstandard as the compressors for a connection. Select the MongoDB\Client or Connection URI tab to see the corresponding code:

$client = new MongoDB\Client(
    'mongodb://<hostname>:<port>',
    ['compressors' => 'snappy,zstd,zlib'],
);

$uri = 'mongodb://<hostname>:<port>/?compressors=snappy,zstd,zlib';
$client = new MongoDB\Client($uri);

Specify the Zlib Compression Level

If you specify Zlib as one of your compression algorithms, you can also use the zlibCompressionLevel option to specify a compression level. This option accepts an integer value between -1 and 9:

• -1: (Default). zlib uses its default compression level (usually 6).

• 0: No compression.

• 1: Fastest speed but lowest compression.

• 9: Best compression but slowest speed.

The following example specifies the zlib compression algorithm and a zlibCompressionLevel value of 1. Select the MongoDB\Client or Connection URI tab to see the corresponding code:

$uriOptions = [
    'compressors'  => 'zlib',
    'zlibCompressionLevel' => 1,
];
$client = new MongoDB\Client(
    'mongodb://<hostname>:<port>',
    $uriOptions,
);

$uri = 'mongodb://<hostname>:<port>/?compressors=zlib&zlibCompressionLevel=1';
$client = new MongoDB\Client($uri);