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copied!<p>This code is bizarre to start with:</p> <pre><code>byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(value); int indexBA = 0; foreach (char item in value.ToCharArray()) { byteArray[indexBA++] = (byte)item; } </code></pre> <p>You're converting it to a byte array using UTF-8 encoding... and <em>then</em> you're overwriting the contents of that array (or at least <em>some</em> of the contents of that array) by casting each character to a byte - which is effectively applying ISO-Latin-1 encoding.</p> <p>Then later on, you're converting <em>arbitrary binary data</em> to a string like this:</p> <pre><code>byteArray = ms.ToArray(); System.Text.StringBuilder sB = new System.Text.StringBuilder(byteArray.Length); foreach (byte item in byteArray) { sB.Append((char)item); } </code></pre> <p><strong>Don't do that.</strong> It's opaque binary data - the chances of the "string" you're creating (again, effectively created via ISO-8859-1) being properly transferable are very slim.</p> <p>When encoding arbitrary binary data as a string, you should almost always use Base64:</p> <pre><code>string base64 = Convert.ToBase64String(byteArray); </code></pre> <p>You're then <em>also</em> using the data as URL-encoded form data - despite the fact that the string could quite easily include characters such as <code>&</code> and <code>%</code> which have special meaning within URL encoded text. Don't do that either.</p> <p>Basically, you should:</p> <ul> <li>Choose which encoding you want to use for the initial text to binary conversion. UTF-8 is a good choice here, as it can represent all of Unicode.</li> <li>Perform the compression (and no, flushing should <em>not</em> cause problems here, although you should also close anyway - ideally via a <code>using</code> statement)</li> <li>Transform the binary data back into text (assuming you really have to) using base64. If you're going to use this as a URL parameter, you should use a web-safe variant of base64, as described on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia base64 page</a>.</li> </ul> <p>To decompress, you'll obviously need to perform the base64 to binary conversion before decompression.</p> <p>If possible, it would be significantly more efficient (in terms of the transferred data) to post the compressed data <em>as binary data</em> rather than as a URL-encoded form parameter.</p>

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