Enable GZIP compression in tomcat

by · November 28, 2008

What is GZIP?

It is a compression format created by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler. Version 0.1 was first publicly released on October 31, 1992. GZIP is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of LZ77 and Huffman coding. DEFLATE was intended as a replacement for LZW and other patent-encumbered data compression algorithms which, at the time, limited the usability of compress and other popular archivers.

How does it helps in improving performance of my web page?

Modern browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera etc supports gzip compressed content. These browsers are capable of uncompressing gzip data into plain text. Servers like Apache, Tomcat, JBoss etc supports gzip compression too. Hence if gzip is enabled in such servers, the response if first compressed and then send to client. Hence this increase performance by many folds.

How to enable GZIP in my tomcat server?

Here is how to enable GZIP compression on Tomcat: edit file /conf/server.xml and add to the HTTP Connector configuration something like this:
compression="on" 
compressionMinSize="2048" 
noCompressionUserAgents="gozilla, traviata" 
compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml"

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)
An example of a HTTP Connector configuration with compression enabled could be:
<Connector port="8080" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
               maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
               enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100"
               connectionTimeout="20000" disableUploadTimeout="true" 
               compression="on" 
         compressionMinSize="2048" 
         noCompressionUserAgents="gozilla, traviata" 
         compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml"/>

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)
Check out following header information before enabling GZIP. And after enabling GZIP look at the size of the webpage and the time taken for loading:
Get our Articles via Email. Enter your email address.

Tags:

You may also like...

52 Comments

  1. Aditya says:
    28 November, 2008, 17:55  

    He dude, why do you wanna do compression on tomcat/coyote..
    most of the people ,when they go production, put the tomcat behind an apache or lighttpd or nginix , as a cluster
    why not the actual webserver do the compression..tomcat compresses in java….while these web servers do it natively..thus much faster and production suitable.

    from somewhere on internet:
    this could certainly be useful if you are running Tomcat standalone, and using apache compression is simply unavailable.
    http://saloon.javaranch.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=003260

    anyways gud job.
    cheers
    Aditya

    Reply
  2. Viral Patel says:
    1 December, 2008, 10:15  

    Thanks Aditiya for the comment…
    Definitely Apache server can be used that can do this.. But sometime back, I wanted to use only Tomcat and hence this code.

    anyways. thanks for the info :)
    Cheers,
    Viral

    Reply
  3. Sateesh says:
    27 February, 2009, 17:02  

    Can anyone help me?????

    I have modified the server.xml conf file to set the \"compression\" properties as specified above in the connector tag.

    I have tested this in FireFox in which I am able to notice the difference in the size. But When tested in the IE7 there is no difference in the size of the page. Can anyone explain me how to figure out the issue with IE7.

    Reply
  4. Viral Patel says:
    27 February, 2009, 18:19  

    Hi Sateesh,
    Use some plugins for IE to check HTTP Header and see if the CONTENT-ENCODING is GZIP. You can use http://www.debugbar.com/download.php to check this.

    Reply
  5. Sateesh says:
    2 March, 2009, 11:25  

    Thanks Viral for your help.

    I had installed the debugger and checked for the output and not found the Content-Encoding, but seen Transfer-Encoding for which the value is \"chunked\". In IE I noticed the size is 6030 bytes but in FF it is 1519 bytes.

    I turned off the Compression and verified the output. The size is same in IE and FF (6030 bytes). Now the Transfer-Encoding header was vanished. Can you kindly let me know why the gzip is not working in IE and how to initialize the compression in IE.

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  6. Ali Virani says:
    10 April, 2009, 0:28  

    I turned on tomcat compression, but I require a java client to get the result that is returned and decompress the data in the client. I have tried to use GZipInputStream, but I get IOException: GZip trailer. Can any one help? Ignoring this block is not an option.

    Reply
  7. Lovelesh Singh says:
    11 May, 2009, 18:54  

    Hi Dear,
    I have enabled this option but after that web page is opening without compress mode, please help…?

    Reply
  8. Ashish Tonse says:
    15 June, 2009, 21:07  

    @Lovelesh – Make sure you also add the mime types for javascript and css. My tomcat wasn’t compressing those until I added these mimetypes:

    text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/css,text/javascript

    Reply
  9. Lovelesh Singh says:
    30 June, 2009, 16:16  

    Hi Ashish, thanks for reply.
    I have added as given your reply but it is still working with unzip mode: I am adding here code please review:

    “”
    ..please help

    Reply
  10. Muiz says:
    11 October, 2009, 16:38  

    Hi all,
    Now i would like to compress the javascript and css files in tomcat 6.0.20 (windows vista),
    1. Moidified server.xml like this:

    2. then test it in firefox 3.5, but i seem doesn’t work, why?
    Can you help me?

    Thanks in advance!

    Reply
  11. Muiz says:
    11 October, 2009, 16:40  

    1. Moidified server.xml like this:
    ..Connector port=”8080″ protocol=”HTTP/1.1″
    connectionTimeout=”20000″
    redirectPort=”8443″
    compression=”on”
    compressionMinSize=”2048″
    noCompressionUserAgents=”gozilla, traviata”
    compressableMimeType=”text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/javascript,text/css”
    …

    Reply
  12. Muiz says:
    11 October, 2009, 17:14  

    Thanks guys,

    This function is working fine!
    It’s my problem: I should clear firefox recent history first and then test it.

    Best regards!

    Reply
  13. Rasha says:
    15 October, 2009, 14:12  

    Hi all,
    Really a nice and useful article.

    But I am also facing the IE problem that the response is not compressed. I installed the debug bar and checked. No ‘CONTENT-ENCODING : GZIP’ in the response. Also the response size is the same with/without the compression.

    Any idea?

    Reply
  14. choesang says:
    3 November, 2009, 15:13  

    Hi Viral,
    i got the same problem like Muiz, the same configuration and Tomcat doesn’t do gzip. any Ideas??

    Reply
  15. Viral Patel says:
    3 November, 2009, 21:20  

    @rasha, @choesang: Generally the problem that you are facing is due to browser cache issue. Clear your browser cache and try again.

    Reply
  16. Deckard Cain says:
    5 November, 2009, 21:39  

    Simply, IE is not a browser..

    Reply
    • Hidayath says:
      19 May, 2015, 17:07  

      Definitely, IE is not a web browser

      Reply
  17. Dave says:
    7 November, 2009, 4:35  

    Where can I find info on how a client can UNCOMPRESS this data? All these articles/topics assume the server is hit from a browser. The browser handles uncompressing the data automatically. I’m not hitting my server from a browser. I’m using another client program.

    Reply
  18. Intesar says:
    21 November, 2009, 12:07  

    Thanks,
    Worked like a charm!

    ..Connector port=”8080″ protocol=”HTTP/1.1″
    connectionTimeout=”20000″
    redirectPort=”8443″
    compression=”on”
    compressionMinSize=”2048″
    noCompressionUserAgents=”gozilla, traviata”
    compressableMimeType=”text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/javascript,text/css”

    Reply
  19. Prakash Suthar says:
    3 December, 2009, 14:13  

    Hi,

    Thanks in advance.

    I am using WAS5.1 and J2EE 1.4.
    I want to use GZip compression in my Struts application.
    I am able to use this compression for .jsp and .html file.
    Once I configure GZip compression for (/*) patten, it gives below exception.

    I am able to used GZip compression for struts application in Tomcat environment, but it does not work for Struts action in WAS5.1.

    ==================================
    [12/3/09 14:32:00:216 IST] 5a8b8c0a WebGroup E SRVE0026E: [Servlet Error]-[]: java.lang.ClassCastException
    at com.ibm.ws.cache.servlet.CacheProxyResponse.isCommitted(CacheProxyResponse.java(Compiled Code))
    at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebAppRequestDispatcher.forward(WebAppRequestDispatcher.java(Compiled Code))
    at org.apache.struts.action.RequestProcessor.doForward(RequestProcessor.java:1069)
    at org.apache.struts.action.RequestProcessor.processForwardConfig(RequestProcessor.java:455)
    at org.apache.struts.action.RequestProcessor.process(RequestProcessor.java:279)
    ==================================

    Let me know if you need some more details.

    Reply
  20. Agus says:
    14 July, 2010, 14:05  

    Hi Viral,

    I have turned On the compression on my tomcat server. Below is the setting of my server.xml

    And it works on all js files, except ext-all.js file which is around ~650KB, and this file is my main intention of of turning ON the compression. Is there any upper limit on the size of the file to be compressed?

    Reply
    • Viral Patel says:
      14 July, 2010, 14:09  

      @Agus: There is no upper limit on size for compression. Check the mime type that you have specified in server.xml. Is it application/x-javascript? Also try to refresh and clear cache to see if the browser is not serving the js from cache.

      Reply
  21. Agus says:
    23 July, 2010, 6:57  

    Hi Viral,

    That’s strange my ext-all.js is not compressed at all.

    Above is the connector settings I have on server.xml. Thank you very much for you help.

    Reply
  22. Agus says:
    23 July, 2010, 6:58  

    port=”8180″ maxHttpHeaderSize=”8192″ address=”192.168.1.83″
    maxThreads=”150″ minSpareThreads=”25″ maxSpareThreads=”75″
    enableLookups=”false” redirectPort=”9543″ acceptCount=”150″
    connectionTimeout=”20000″ disableUploadTimeout=”true”
    compression=”on” compressionMinSize=”12000″ noCompressionUserAgents=”gozilla,traviata”
    compressableMimeType=”text/html,text/xml,text/css,text/javascript,application/x-javascript”

    Reply
  23. Agus says:
    23 July, 2010, 6:58  

    May I know how to post the code here?

    Reply
  24. sn says:
    19 February, 2011, 22:41  

    Nice tutorial, I like most of your blogs. Here’s another tutorial that explains how to enable gzip compression http://www.servletworld.com/tomcat/enable-tomcat-gzip-compression.html

    Reply
  25. Gig says:
    22 March, 2011, 16:31  

    I have the same problem with Agus.
    some of my .js files are gzipped, but some are not.
    wierd

    Reply
  26. John says:
    16 April, 2011, 3:23  

    Maybe it will be better to wrap your JS declaration into compressing tag like that

    <g:compress>
    <script type=”text/javascript” src=”common.js”/>
    <script type=”text/javascript” src=”closure/goog/base.js”/>
    </script>
    </g:compress>

    using Granule tag library from http://code.google.com/p/granule/

    Reply
  27. Gustavo says:
    16 September, 2011, 1:11  

    Is there any way to set these configurations in WEB-INF/web.xml?

    Reply
  28. Raul says:
    4 January, 2012, 1:15  

    Thanx!

    Reply
  29. Vicky says:
    1 March, 2012, 17:22  

    Thanks for your help my website responding like a speed of light…thanks a ton..

    Reply
  30. Vicky says:
    1 March, 2012, 17:39  

    If i use text/javascript then its not working i want to use compressed content of css,js.

    Reply
  31. Sree says:
    16 August, 2012, 20:52  

    Does Tomcat support is supported for IE7? If there are any special settings that we need to make in IE7, please share. Thanks

    Reply
  32. giri says:
    22 October, 2012, 17:56  

    Hi,
    I have enable gzip compression in server.xml inside tomcat using the following code

    When i check the Firebug-> Under Net->All ..the response header is showing the encoding type as gzip but when i Analyse my we page in yahoo YSlow or Google PageSpeed its listing all the js files and css files are not compressed using gzip

    Please provide some suggestion.

    Reply
  33. NSINGH says:
    27 October, 2012, 2:29  

    How do I verify size after I enable compression, I cannot identify the difference with human eye.

    Reply
  34. NSINGH says:
    27 October, 2012, 2:34  

    I want to know how much difference in size and time it took end to end. Is there any software I can use. I am using chrome debugger; it does not show any difference under network tab.

    Reply
  35. Rohan says:
    21 May, 2013, 10:19  

    Thank you very much Viral.

    Reply
  36. lakshman says:
    28 May, 2013, 18:11  

    Hi,
    I have enable gzip compression in server.xml inside tomcat 6.0 using the following code

    When i check the Firebug-> Under Net->All ..the response header is showing the only html pages as encoding type as gzip but i used YSlow and firebug in that all the js files and css files are not compressed .it not showing the gzip in response header for all js and css files…

    could you Please provide some suggestions.I need to do the gzip for js and css files also…

    Reply
  37. Rian says:
    18 September, 2013, 1:46  

    Hi viral, thanks for share how to enable Gzip compression in Tomcat server, But i need tutorials for blogger platform, can you help me?

    regard,
    rian

    Reply
  38. Abhishek shukla says:
    27 September, 2013, 18:01  

    Hi viral,
    Thanks for this nice post, i really like all post related to java, and i always found all the post help me. Thanks a lot. and keep posting. Thanks.

    Reply
  39. sai says:
    8 October, 2013, 18:01  

    hi viral,
    content-encoding is gzip but why the transfer-encoding is chunked after gzip compression.

    Reply
  40. Jonathan Neufeld says:
    25 March, 2014, 2:21  

    Great article, this helped me troubleshoot a compression issue, it looks like Apache’s HttpClient library doesn’t handle compression natively.

    You should also note that “force” is a good troubleshooting option for the compression value in lieu of “on”

    Reply
  41. Mrinal says:
    27 April, 2014, 22:01  

    I have added the lines and still it doesn’t work. I get “Transfer-encoding:gzip” but no “Content-encoding”. Please guide me at the earliest. Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  42. Jimmy Wadia says:
    22 January, 2015, 22:47  

    Hi Viral,
    I am having problems implementing compression in my Tomcat 6.0.35. I use Apache 2.2 as front end. The following is from catalina.2015-01-22.log:
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener init
    INFO: Loaded APR based Apache Tomcat Native library 1.1.32.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener init
    INFO: APR capabilities: IPv6 [true], sendfile [true], accept filters [false], random [true].
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘maxhttpheadersize’ to ‘8192’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘maxthreads’ to ‘150’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘minsparethreads’ to ’25’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘maxsparethreads’ to ’75’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘enablelookups’ to ‘false’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘redirectport’ to ‘8443’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘acceptcount’ to ‘100’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘connectiontimeout’ to ‘20000’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘disableuploadtimeout’ to ‘true’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘compressionminsize’ to ‘2048’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘nocompressionuseragents’ to ‘gozilla, traviata’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule begin
    WARNING: [SetAllPropertiesRule]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property ‘compressablemimetype’ to ‘text/html,text/xml’ did not find a matching property.
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioSelectorPool getSharedSelector
    INFO: Using a shared selector for servlet write/read
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol init
    INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpAprProtocol init
    INFO: Initializing Coyote AJP/1.3 on ajp-8009
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
    INFO: Initialization processed in 588 ms
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService start
    INFO: Starting service Catalina
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine start
    INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/6.0.35
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDescriptor
    INFO: Deploying configuration descriptor host-manager.xml
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDescriptor
    INFO: Deploying configuration descriptor manager.xml
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
    INFO: Deploying web application archive pager-taglib-2.0.war
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDirectory
    INFO: Deploying web application directory DentistReferralCenter
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDirectory
    INFO: Deploying web application directory docs
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:34 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDirectory
    INFO: Deploying web application directory ROOT
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:35 PM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol start
    INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:35 PM org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpAprProtocol start
    INFO: Starting Coyote AJP/1.3 on ajp-8009
    Jan 22, 2015 12:07:35 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
    INFO: Server startup in 497 ms
    Can you help with this SetAllPropertiesRule error?
    Thanks.

    Reply
  43. Hidayath says:
    19 May, 2015, 17:08  

    How can we do it at application level. Our tomcat server hosts many application. I don’t know how the behaviour or other applications will be. So, I want to enable gzip compression at web app level. How can we do it?

    Reply
  44. Etienne says:
    28 July, 2015, 21:43  

    Thanks for this trick! it works fine!

    Reply
  45. krishna says:
    29 January, 2016, 14:11  

    with compression=on and mimetypes set, shouldn’t tomcat NOT compress with
    accept-encoding: identity
    accept-encoding’: ‘gzip;q=0,deflate,sdch
    accept-encoding’: ‘gzip;q=0,deflate,sdch
    or no accept-encoding header

    Reply
  46. Jman says:
    14 September, 2016, 1:22  

    So…

    This doesn’t make sense.. If apache is over the top of tomcat.. How would it know that it needs to compress anything in the http stream?
    I am running a tomcat instance with Apache over the top of it, and an apache proxy in front of that. If I were to enable compression on the proxy server at the front. It’s not going to know what objects in the http stream need to be compressed? Right?
    If I enable compression at the tomcat layer. I would have to have proper proxy configs in place to support this too? No?
    I think this is a very complex answer and that it’s not as simple and would love some expert opinions.

    Reply
  47. Vishad Patel says:
    12 October, 2016, 12:45  

    Add all below list of type to enable compression on images as well
    text/html,text/xml,text/plain,text/css,text/javascript,application/javascript,image/png,image/png,image/jpeg, image/webp

    Reply
  48. Denis says:
    23 April, 2017, 12:38  

    Somme correction by attribute name -> must be “compressibleMimeType” but not “compressableMimeType”
    https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/config/http.html

    Reply
  49. Tasleem says:
    31 December, 2019, 18:11  

    Will it work in liberty server?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow: