compressing a bunch of id's to construct a url

gistfile1.py

import random
import string
import base64
import zlib
import bz2

random_ids = [''.join([random.choice(string.ascii_lowercase) for x in range(8)]) for n in range(1000)]

long_string = ','.join(random_ids)

b64_string = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(long_string)

compressed_string = zlib.compress(long_string, 9)

b64_compressed_string = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(compressed_string)

bz2_compressed_string = bz2.compress(long_string, 9)

b64_bz2_compressed_string = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(bz2_compressed_string)

len(long_string)
len(b64_string)
len(compressed_string)
len(b64_compressed_string)
len(bz2_compressed_string)
len(b64_bz2_compressed_string)

You'll get slightly better compression if you use bz2 instead of zlib - bz2 will give you back some binary data, but because you're base64ing it you should be fine. My results (bz2 is last set):

8999
12000
5646
7528
5497
7332

Sweet. Thanks man!