How to enable gzip compression for content encoding with Jersey (JAX-RS 2.0) client?

Question

I have a Java application that uses the Jersey implementation of JAX-RS 2.0 and I want to enable gzip compression on the client side. The server has it enabled and I have verified that by looking in Chrome at the "Size/Content" in the Developer Tools for the specific URL the client is using.

I see a lot of information and documentation floating around the web about setting the HTTP Headers with filters and decoding response bodies with interceptors and I cannot decipher what I actually need to code in the client.

I have this code:

private synchronized void initialize() {
    Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
    client.register(new HttpBasicAuthFilter(username, password));
    WebTarget targetBase = client.target(getBaseUrl());
    ...
}

What should I add to enable compression?

Answer 1

Modify to look like:

private synchronized void initialize() {
    Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
    client.register(new HttpBasicAuthFilter(username, password));
    client.register(GZipEncoder.class);
    WebTarget targetBase = client.target(getBaseUrl());
    ...
    // new lines here:
    Invocation.Builder request = targetBase.request(MEDIA_TYPE);
    request.header(HttpHeaders.ACCEPT_ENCODING, "gzip");
    ...
}

In this example, there are some fields and methods being referenced that I don't include in the example (such as MEDIA_TYPE), you'll have to figure those out yourself. Should be pretty straight forward.

I verified this worked by analyzing the response headers and monitoring the application network usage. I got a 10:1 compression ratio according to the network usage checks I did. That seems about right, yay!