Beast: How to decompress gzip encoded response properly?

[WeissGotsman]

for beast version 76,

the following code is modified from the http client example, with gzip enabled. but I failed to decompress it either with the boost iostream interface or zlib interface, I also tried to save the response body string into a .gz file and try to decompress it with 7-zip, but get a CRC error.

https://pastebin.com/DiUME7Z1

My question is: is the response body in standard gzip format, when Content-Encoding: gzip, how to decompress it properly? Most http request library does not require manual decompression.

[vinniefalco]

Most http request library does not require manual decompression.

Beast only removes the chunk-encoding. You are responsible for everything else, including gzip. Beast is not a "http request library" its a low-level protocol layering on top of HTTP. I don't know the details of gzip encoding so I'm afraid I won't be of much help. However, if you get it working you should consider publishing it as part of a utilities library that works with Beast.

[WeissGotsman]

I tried to compress the std::string of the uncompressed http response body (from www.example.com) with the boost iostream interface using gzip, the first 10 bytes differ from the gzipped http response body

[vinniefalco]

Perhaps this is related to the "gzip header?" Does HTTP use the header when using the gzip transfer-coding? These links might help:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5280633/gzip-compression-of-chunked-encoding-response
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1838699/how-can-i-decompress-a-gzip-stream-with-zlib
If you use the straight zlib API, you can add 32 to windowBits to auto-detect the header, as mentioned in the link immediately above.

[WeissGotsman]

It looks like the www.example.com server only use "Content-Encoding: gzip".
There is no "Transfer-Encoding: gzip" found in the response

[WeissGotsman]

the answer in your second link is correct, change line 42 of my code from
if (inflateInit(&zs) != Z_OK)
to
if (inflateInit2(&zs, MAX_WBITS + 16) != Z_OK)
works

[vinniefalco]

Aha!!! Nice!!

[WeissGotsman]

a production ready solution:

https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/lib/content_encoding.c
https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/lib/content_encoding.h

[vinniefalco]

I don't see how that integrates with Beast?

[WeissGotsman]

CURL's code serves as a reference on how to setup the zlib correctly, even through boost::iostreams

//decompress with boost's interface
boost::iostreams::array_source src{ res.body.data(), res.body.size() };
boost::iostreams::filtering_istream is;

//boost::iostreams::zlib_params zparams{};
if (res["Content-Encoding"] == "deflate")
{
    std::cout << "decompressing " << res["Content-Encoding"] << std::endl;
    std::cout << "-------------------------------------------------" << '\n';
    is.push(boost::iostreams::zlib_decompressor{ -MAX_WBITS });         // deflate
}
else if (res["Content-Encoding"] == "gzip")
{
    std::cout << "decompressing " << res["Content-Encoding"] << std::endl;
    std::cout << "-------------------------------------------------" << '\n';
    is.push(boost::iostreams::gzip_decompressor{});                     // gzip
}
else if (res["Content-Encoding"] == "")
{
    std::cout << "uncompressed " << res["Content-Encoding"] << std::endl;
    std::cout << "-------------------------------------------------" << '\n';
}

is.push(src);       
boost::iostreams::copy(is, std::cout);