Revisiting the long-overdue "TODO always gunzip" in ngx_http_gunzip_filter_module.c

[J.R.]

Recently I was looking into having my upstream server gzip content
that is sent to nginx (which is acting as a reverse proxy) to reduce
local bandwidth. However, I needed to decompress the response so nginx
could do some manipulation, then obviously it would get re-compressed
(typically with brotli) before sending out to the client.

After finding numerous posts saying that "that feature doesn't exist",
then looking at the source of the gunzip module and finding the "TODO"
saying the exact thing I was looking for, I managed to find this old
post from 2013 where someone made a patch to do the exact thing
needed:

http://mailman.nginx.org/pipermail/nginx-devel/2013-January/003276.html

It's only about 11 lines of code, attached is a newer patch I did
against 1.17.4 since the gunzip source changed a bit. Basically the
patch adds the option "gunzip_force on;"

I do agree with the TODO comment in the source that having a way for
other modules to request decompression would be great, but also having
a configuration option (like this patch) is also a good feature.

After implementing this patch, and configuring the upstream server to
use gzip level 1 (figured maximize speed and minimize cpu usage), my
local bandwidth usage between the two immediately dropped 80-85%, and
I swear even the load levels dropped a hair, probably due to less
networking overhead, despite the compressing & decompressing of
content.

I realize there is probably a mile-long TODO list for nginx features,
but something so trivial like this patch has such a huge impact on
network usage and I'm sure a better implementation would still only be
a minimal code change. Just trying to give this a nudge so it's not
forgotten, as I did come across quite a few posts online into how to
do such a thing, so the demand is out there.

Jason
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 002_force_gunzip.patch
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 1615 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nginx.org/pipermail/nginx/attachments/20191020/0024f95d/attachment.obj>