How to compress a .net object instance using gzip

Question

I am wanting to compress results from QUERYS of the database before adding them to the cache.

I want to be able to compress any reference type.

I have a working

Answer 1

I just added GZipStream support for my app today, so I can share some code here;

Serialization:

using (Stream s = File.Create(PathName))
{
    RijndaelManaged rm = new RijndaelManaged();
    rm.Key = CryptoKey;
    rm.IV = CryptoIV;
    using (CryptoStream cs = new CryptoStream(s, rm.CreateEncryptor(), CryptoStreamMode.Write))
    {
        using (GZipStream gs = new GZipStream(cs, CompressionMode.Compress))
        {
            BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
            bf.Serialize(gs, _instance);
        }
    }
}

Deserialization:

using (Stream s = File.OpenRead(PathName))
{
    RijndaelManaged rm = new RijndaelManaged();
    rm.Key = CryptoKey;
    rm.IV = CryptoIV;
    using (CryptoStream cs = new CryptoStream(s, rm.CreateDecryptor(), CryptoStreamMode.Read))
    {
        using (GZipStream gs = new GZipStream(cs, CompressionMode.Decompress))
        {
            BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
            _instance = (Storage)bf.Deserialize(gs);
        }
    }
}

NOTE: if you use CryptoStream, it is kinda important that you chain (un)zipping and (de)crypting right this way, because you'll want to lose your entropy BEFORE encryption creates noise from your data.