Compression Guide ​
HTTPX incorporates native compression codecs for Gzip, Deflate, Brotli, and Zstandard, providing seamless bandwidth savings for both client requests and server responses.
Supported Codecs ​
| Algorithm | Content-Encoding | Quality / Speed Profile |
|---|---|---|
| Zstandard | zstd | Ultra-fast decompression, outstanding ratio |
| Brotli | br | Highest compression ratio for web text/assets |
| Gzip | gzip | Universally supported legacy standard |
| Deflate | deflate | RFC 1951 raw deflate stream |
Client Automatic Decompression ​
When making client requests, HTTPX automatically adds the Accept-Encoding: gzip, br, zstd header to request options unless explicitly overridden.
When the server returns Content-Encoding: gzip (or br, zstd), HTTPX decodes the body transparently before returning it to the caller:
zig
const response = try client.get("https://httpbin.org/gzip", .{});
defer response.deinit();
// response.body is already decompressed plaintext bytes
std.debug.print("Body: {s}\n", .{response.body});Server Response Compression ​
HTTPX server supports on-the-fly response compression based on the client's Accept-Encoding preference:
zig
server.get("/large-data", struct {
fn handle(ctx: *httpx.Context) !void {
const accept = ctx.header("Accept-Encoding") orelse "";
if (std.mem.indexOf(u8, accept, "gzip") != null) {
ctx.header("Content-Encoding", "gzip");
// Compress and write
}
try ctx.json(large_data_payload);
}
}.handle);When serving static files via server.static(), HTTPX automatically detects pre-compressed .gz, .br, and .zst files and serves them with zero runtime CPU overhead.