Node.js: Gzip compression?

Question

Am I wrong in finding that Node.js does no gzip compression and there are no modules out there to perform gzip compression? How can anyone use a web server that has no compr

Answer 1

How about this?

node-compress
A streaming compression / gzip module for node.js
To install, ensure that you have libz installed, and run:
node-waf configure
node-waf build
This will put the compress.node binary module in build/default.
...

Answer 2

As of today, epxress.compress() seems to be doing a brilliant job of this.

In any express app just call this.use(express.compress());.

I'm running locomotive on top of express personally and this is working beautifully. I can't speak to any other libraries or frameworks built on top of express but as long as they honor full stack transparency you should be fine.

Answer 3

Use gzip compression

Gzip compressing can greatly decrease the size of the response body and hence increase the speed of a web app. Use the compression middleware for gzip compression in your Express app. For example:

var compression = require('compression');
var express = require('express')
var app = express()
app.use(compression())

Answer 4

It's been a few good days with node, and you're right to say that you can't create a webserver without gzip.

There are quite a lot options given on the modules page on the Node.js Wiki. I tried out most of them, but this is the one which I'm finally using -

https://github.com/donnerjack13589/node.gzip

v1.0 is also out and it has been quite stable so far.

Answer 5

Even if you're not using express, you can still use their middleware. The compression module is what I'm using:

var http = require('http')
var fs = require('fs')
var compress = require("compression")
http.createServer(function(request, response) {
  var noop = function(){}, useDefaultOptions = {}
  compress(useDefaultOptions)(request,response,noop) // mutates the response object

  response.writeHead(200)
  fs.createReadStream('index.html').pipe(response)
}).listen(1337)

Answer 6

Although you can gzip using a reverse proxy such as nginx, lighttpd or in varnish. It can be beneficial to have most http optimisations such as gzipping at the application level so that you can have a much granular approach on what asset's to gzip.

I have actually created my own gzip module for expressjs / connect called gzippo https://github.com/tomgco/gzippo although new it does do the job. Plus it uses node-compress instead of spawning the unix gzip command.