PHP code to compress and decompress strings

The following php code compresses and decompresses strings through gzcompress and gzuncompress. The compression level can be set

$str = 'Hello I am a very very very long string';
$compressed = gzcompress($str, 9 );//The compression level is 9
$uncompressed = gzuncompress($compressed);

echo $str, "n";
echo $uncompressed, "n";
echo base64_encode($compressed), "n";
 echo bin2hex($compressed), "n";
echo urlencode($compressed), "n";

php