HTTP request compression

Question

General Use-Case

Imagine a client that is uploading large amounts of JSON. The Content-Type should remain application/json because that

Answer 1

Add to your header when you are sending:

JSON : "Accept-Encoding" : "gzip, deflate"

Client code :

HttpUriRequest request = new HttpGet(url);
request.addHeader("Accept-Encoding", "gzip");

@JulianReschke pointed out that there can be a case of:

"Content-Encoding" : "gzip, gzip"

so extended server code will be:

InputStream in = response.getEntity().getContent();
Header encodingHeader = response.getFirstHeader("Content-Encoding");

String gzip = "gzip";
if (encodingHeader != null) {
    String encoding = encodingHeader.getValue().toLowerCase();
    int firstGzip = encoding.indexOf(gzip);
    if (firstGzip > -1) {
      in = new GZIPInputStream(in);
      int secondGzip = encoding.indexOf(gzip, firstGzip + gzip.length());
      if (secondGzip > -1) {
        in = new GZIPInputStream(in);
      }
    }
}

I suppose that nginx is used as load balancer or proxy, so you need to set tomcat to do decompression.

Add following attributes to the Connector in server.xml on Tomcat,

Accepting gziped requests in tomcat is a different story. You'll have to put a filter in front of your servlets to enable request decompression. You can find more about that here.