Http-server: gzip support

[WickyNilliams]

Would it be possible to have an option for gzip/deflate compression?

[gr0uch]

+1

[chadxz]

+1 would like this too

[hungsu]

+1 This sure would be sweet!

[KyleAMathews]

+1

[mathiasschopmans]

:+1:

[LukeAskew]

+1

[Tims101]

:+1:

[michael-lawrence]

:+1:

[axwell]

No news on this ?

[avesus]

:+1:

[smarts]

I got this working locally (as an always-on feature, not configurable) by modifying http-server.js:

  before.push(ecstatic({
    gzip: true, // HACK: I ADDED THIS LINE!
    root: this.root,
    cache: this.cache,
    showDir: this.showDir,
    autoIndex: this.autoIndex,
    defaultExt: this.ext,
    handleError: typeof options.proxy !== 'string'
  }));

ecstatic will check if the accept-encoding header allows compression, and if present will look for a file that matches the requested file name with '.gz' at the end. For example:
this request: http://example.com/foo.css
with this header: Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, sdch
will look for a file called foo.css.gz and will serve it w/ the Content-Encoding: gzip HTTP header if it exists

[mydearxym]

+10

[hanai]

It't really useful.

[tomkel]

+1!

[derhuerst]

Please use the reaction feature to express you'd like to have this feature.

[PatrickJS]

+1

[mattlavallee]

doing an npm install of http-server doesn't seem to pull in the gzip property event after an npm cache clean. Is this feature available in the npm package yet?

[derhuerst]

Is this feature available in the npm package yet?

Nope. npm info http-server gitHead says the published git commit is 1a8552c5e028bd5500027ee940111133927a4e94. 1a8552c is behind b456b77, which added gzip support.

[golopot]

For what I understand the current --gzip option requires you to produce something.ext.gz by yourself. But what I want is a option that does the compression on the fly, like the express middleware app.use(compression()), just plug in one line and no hassle.

[BigBlueHat]

@golopot right now, I'd say that on-the-fly compression is "out of scope" for a static web server--which should really just transmit content with minimal involvement. If you'd still like to discuss it, though, please file a separate issue. Thanks!

[WickyNilliams]

To be clear, on-the-fly compression was exactly what I wanted when i originally opened this issue

[BigBlueHat]

Good to know @WickyNilliams. At this point, I don't plan on going beyond what's "underneath" in the form of node-ecstatic's support https://github.com/jfhbrook/node-ecstatic#optsgzip

There are few things we're adding here, but mostly I'm wanting to continue to build up from the node-ecstatic foundation. Any sort of server-side content processing would be out-of-scope in that case.

[smarts]

@BigBlueHat i wasn't necessarily looking for on-the-fly compression. As noted in my previous comment
https://github.com/indexzero/http-server/issues/56#issuecomment-141689367
i got it working w/ a hack, but i'd like this to be supported by the server's options instead of having to hack it myself. Can it be added as an option?

[BigBlueHat]

@smarts it's been an option since 0.10.0 was released https://github.com/indexzero/http-server/releases/tag/0.10.0 😄 If you need something more, perhaps open a new issue so we can discuss that there rather than on this closed issue.

[smarts]

Doh! I now see the pull request that references this issue. Thanks for being patient w/ me @BigBlueHat 😅

[Viyozc]

+100

[Nashorn]

Seriously, don't understand how hard on-the-fly compression can be, in just a few lines:

var zlib = require('zlib');

pathName = url.parse(request.url).pathname;
var fp = __dirname+"/../.."+pathName; //custom patthing, ignore

var readStream = fs.createReadStream(fp);
readStream.on('open', function (res) {
response.writeHead(200, { 'content-encoding': 'gzip' });
readStream.pipe(zlib.createGzip()).pipe(response);
});

[thornjad]

@Nashorn you're more than welcome to turn your suggestion into a pull request!

[Nashorn]

It's not clear from looking at http-server.js, where I would integrate the above solution which does dynamic gzip compression on responses. I found this area, but not even sure where/how to plug in.

var serverOptions = {
    before: before,
    headers: this.headers,
    onError: function (err, req, res) {
      if (options.logFn) {
        options.logFn(req, res, err);
      }

      res.end();
    }
  };