Java GZip String Compression

Java GZip String Compression

/**
 *
 * @author https://stackoverflow.com/users/1964272/dropout
 */
public static String compress(String str) throws IOException {
    if (str == null || str.length() == 0) {
        return str;
    }
    ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    GZIPOutputStream gzip = new GZIPOutputStream(out);
    gzip.write(str.getBytes());
    gzip.close();
    String outStr = out.toString("UTF-8");
    return outStr;
 }