Ignoring or avoiding the accept-encoding: gzip, deflate, br

November 8, 2024 | by Cícero Fabio

In a Spring Boot application, if you want to ignore or avoid the Accept-Encoding header (which commonly includes values like gzip, deflate, or br), you can configure your application to respond without applying these encodings. Here are several approaches you can take:

1. Set Response Headers

You can modify the response headers to ensure that the Content-Encoding is not applied. This can be done in a @ControllerAdvice or directly in your controller methods.

import org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ControllerAdvice;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@ControllerAdvice
@RestController
public class CustomHeaderAdvice {

    @ResponseBody
    public ResponseEntity<String> handleResponse(String body) {
        HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
        headers.add(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_ENCODING, "identity");  // No encoding
        return ResponseEntity.ok().headers(headers).body(body);
    }
}

2. Disable Compression Globally

You can disable response compression in your Spring Boot application by modifying the application properties. Add the following line to your application.properties or application.yml:

# application.properties
spring.http.gzip.enabled=false

# application.yml
spring:
  http:
    gzip:
      enabled: false

3. Use a Filter

If you need more control, you can implement a Filter to modify the response headers:

import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import java.io.IOException;

public class NoGzipFilter implements Filter {

    @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain)
            throws IOException, ServletException {
        HttpServletResponse httpResponse = (HttpServletResponse) response;
        httpResponse.setHeader("Content-Encoding", "identity");  // No encoding
        chain.doFilter(request, response);
    }

    @Override
    public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {
        // Initialization code if needed
    }

    @Override
    public void destroy() {
        // Cleanup code if needed
    }
}

Then, register the filter in your Spring Boot application:

import org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
public class FilterConfig {

    @Bean
    public FilterRegistrationBean<NoGzipFilter> noGzipFilter() {
        FilterRegistrationBean<NoGzipFilter> registrationBean = new FilterRegistrationBean<>();
        registrationBean.setFilter(new NoGzipFilter());
        registrationBean.addUrlPatterns("/*"); // Apply to all URLs
        return registrationBean;
    }
}

Additional Notes

Client-Side: Ensure that the clients making requests to your application are also configured not to request compression if they can control that aspect.
Testing: After implementing these changes, you should test your application to confirm that the Accept-Encoding header is being handled as you expect.

By following one of these methods, you can effectively ignore or handle the Accept-Encoding header in your Spring Boot application.