Content Compression Setup (Gzip/Brotli)

Setting up Gzip/Brotli compression

Transport-level compression reduces HTML, CSS, JS size 3-10 times. Brotli gives 15-25% better compression than Gzip at same CPU. Setup takes 30 minutes and requires no code changes.

Nginx: Gzip + Brotli

# /etc/nginx/nginx.conf or /etc/nginx/conf.d/compression.conf

# Gzip—supported everywhere
gzip on;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 6;        # 1-9, CPU/compression balance; 6 is sweet spot
gzip_min_length 256;      # don't compress very small files
gzip_types
    application/javascript
    application/json
    application/xml
    application/rss+xml
    image/svg+xml
    text/css
    text/html
    text/javascript
    text/plain
    text/xml
    font/woff
    font/woff2;

# Brotli—requires ngx_brotli module
# Install: apt install libnginx-mod-brotli
brotli on;
brotli_comp_level 6;
brotli_types
    application/javascript
    application/json
    text/css
    text/html
    text/plain
    image/svg+xml
    font/woff2;

Check:

curl -H "Accept-Encoding: br" -I https://example.ru/
# Response should contain: Content-Encoding: br

curl -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" -I https://example.ru/
# Response: Content-Encoding: gzip

Pre-compressed static assets

For static files (JS, CSS, bundles)—generate .gz and .br files at build, serve directly. No CPU cost per request:

// vite.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
import viteCompression from 'vite-plugin-compression';

export default defineConfig({
    plugins: [
        viteCompression({ algorithm: 'gzip',   ext: '.gz' }),
        viteCompression({ algorithm: 'brotliCompress', ext: '.br' }),
    ]
});

# Nginx: serve pre-compressed files
location ~* \.(js|css|woff2)$ {
    gzip_static  on;    # look for .gz version
    brotli_static on;   # look for .br version (ngx_brotli module)
    expires 1y;
    add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
}

Apache

# .htaccess
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/css application/javascript
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/json image/svg+xml font/woff2
</IfModule>

Laravel: middleware for API

// Laravel doesn't compress responses by default
// Add middleware in bootstrap/app.php for API
->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) {
    $middleware->api(append: [
        \Illuminate\Http\Middleware\GzipResponse::class, // Laravel 11+
    ]);
})

Or via Nginx—preferred for performance.

Typical compression results

Setup time: 30 minutes for Nginx configuration.