Serve Gzipped content with Java Servlets

Question

I was wondering if there was an easy way to serve GZipped content with Java Servlets. I already have the app up and running so the modifications needed should be to

Answer 1

If you really, really don't want to fiddle with the Java code any more, you could also consider hooking an Apache server in front of your servlet container.

If you have a lot of static content, this could actually improve performance for you, as the Apache will be a bit faster for static pages than any servlet container. So you'd configure it to only delegate servlet requests to your servlet container on localhost.

Apache has handy built-in options for compressing output. I don't remember how to set them, but it's easy and versatile. It negotiates with browsers about what they can handle, and so on. In case of doubt, Apache will generally be more savvy and up-to-date on compression methods than any Java container.