Outgoing http data compression

Question

Is anybody know, is it possible to compress my outgoing http data in IE? I perform ajax requests to a server and want to reduce amount of traffic in order to speed up my app.

Thanks, Egor

Answer 1

The following is a common way to create a compression filter attribute:

public class CompressFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext actionContext)
    {
        HttpRequestBase request = actionContext.HttpContext.Request;

        string acceptEncoding = request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"];

        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(acceptEncoding))
        {
            acceptEncoding = acceptEncoding.ToLowerInvariant();
            HttpResponseBase response = actionContext.HttpContext.Response;

            if (acceptEncoding.Contains("gzip"))
            {
                response.AddHeader("Content-encoding", "gzip");
                response.Filter = new GZipStream(response.Filter, CompressionMode.Compress);
            }
            else if (acceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))
            {
                response.AddHeader("Content-encoding", "deflate");
                response.Filter = new DeflateStream(response.Filter, CompressionMode.Compress);
            }
        }
    }
}

Now you can decorate your controller with a [CompressFilter] attribute. It will add a compression header to the response for browsers that support it, which IIS will pick up. If you have switched on Dynamic Compression, IIS will then output compressed responses.