Compress Network Traffic

Overview

In this guide, you can learn how to use the Kotlin Sync driver to enable network compression. The driver provides a connection option to compress messages, which reduces the amount of data passed over the network between MongoDB and your application.

The driver supports the following compression algorithms:

If you specify multiple compression algorithms, the driver selects the first one in the list supported by your MongoDB instance.

Note

Applications that require Snappy or Zstandard compression must add explicit dependencies for those algorithms. To learn more, see the Compression Algorithm Dependencies section of this guide.

Specify Compression Algorithms

You can enable compression for the connection to your MongoDB instance by specifying the algorithms in one of the following ways:

Chain the compressorList() method to the MongoClientSettings.builder() method.
Use the compressors parameter in your connection URI.

The following examples demonstrate how to specify all available compressors while connecting to MongoDB. Select the MongoClientSettings or Connection URI tab to see the corresponding syntax:

val settings = MongoClientSettings.builder()
    .applyConnectionString(ConnectionString("<connection string>"))
    .compressorList(
        listOf(
            MongoCompressor.createSnappyCompressor(),
            MongoCompressor.createZlibCompressor(),
            MongoCompressor.createZstdCompressor())
    )
    .build()
val mongoClient = MongoClient.create(settings)

val uri = ConnectionString("mongodb+srv://<db_username>:<db_password>@<cluster-url>/?compressors=snappy,zlib,zstd")
val mongoClient = MongoClient.create(uri)

Specify the Zlib Compression Level

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

-1: Default compression (usually 6)
0: No compression
1: Fastest speed but lowest compression
9: Best compression but slowest speed

The following examples demonstrate how to specify a compression level for the zlib compressor. Select the MongoClientSettings or Connection URI tab to see the corresponding syntax:

val zlib = MongoCompressor.createZlibCompressor()
val settings = MongoClientSettings.builder()
    .applyConnectionString(ConnectionString(uri))
    .compressorList(listOf(zlib.withProperty(MongoCompressor.LEVEL, <level>)))
    .build()
val mongoClient = MongoClient.create(settings)

val uri = "mongodb://<db_username>:<db_password>@<hostname>:<port>/?" +
          "compressors=zlib" +
          "zlibCompressionLevel=<zlib compression level>"
val mongoClient = MongoClient.create(uri)

Compression Algorithm Dependencies

The JDK natively supports Zlib compression. However, Snappy and Zstandard depend on open source Java implementations. To learn more about these implementations, see the following GitHub repositories:

API Documentation

To learn more about any of the methods or types discussed in this guide, see the following API documentation:

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Connection Options

Stable API