Compression, https

[daniel]

Does ServiceStack support compression, both in requests and responses? Does it suport https when self hosting? These are the only things that keep me from using it ;) 

[daniel]

I meant response compression and request decompression

[Demis Bellot]

Hi Daniel,

If you use the RequestContext.ToOptimizedResultUsingCache it will return the most optimal result, i.e. Deflated/Gzipped output if the client (i.e. browser) supports it, example at:

https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Examples/blob/master/src/ServiceStack.Northwind/ServiceStack.Northwind.ServiceInterface/CachedServices.cs

Compression is not on by default but you can opt-in by returning your DTO in a CompressedResult to get this behaviour.

We don't do any special functionality to de-compress requests ourselves so it will only work if the web server/IIS is configured to uncompresses the request automatically for ASP.NET applications.

Self-hosting is available using the HttpListener, we've never hosted it using https ourselves but below are some tips on how to host a HttpListener with https:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.httplistener.aspx

Cheers,

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 4:36 PM, daniel <nyk...@gmail.com> wrote:

I meant response compression and request decompression

--
- Demis

http://twitter.com/demisbellot

http://www.servicestack.net/mythz_blog

[daniel]

Hi Demis, 

Thank You for response, I think RequestContext.ToOptimizedResultUsingCache will do just great for responses. Do You think it could be possible to decompress request using "Accessing the IHttpRequest and IHttpResponse using filters"?

Cheers,

Daniel

[Demis Bellot]

Not with the Request and Response filters in ServiceStack since the DTO needs to be already materialized at that point.

You want to look for an IIS/ASP.NET configuration/filter that automatically decompresses deflated/gzipped requests that it receives for dynamic requests. 

It may even be on by default, you should just try it and see if it works.

Here's some info about configuring compression in IIS:

http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2004/01/12/57916.aspx

Cheers,

[daniel]

It looks like IIS only support reponses compression. Requests that I use are quite large (~40M) comparing to compressed (~4M).

Using WCF, I have written a custom message encoder (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms751458.aspx). I need solution that works both on .NET and Mono.

Cheers,

Daniel

[Demis Bellot]

Ok 40M web service requests sounds like a lot, too much.

Personally due to the resource constraints and fragility of handling of handling large messages I don't think processing 40M in realtime (i.e. as soon as you receive the request) is a winning strategy. 

Up to a certain size I would stop trying call web services with very large payloads and instead use the HTTP File Upload mechanism to transfer data instead which is much more resilient.

My preferred approach would be to package the payload on the client in an optimal format, HTTP upload it to the web service which would simply persist the message before an offline background thread or external service/process detects, unwraps and executes the request one at a time.

If you're considering doing something similar in the future then the RestFiles example shows how to process/save HTTP uploaded files:

https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Examples/blob/master/src/RestFiles/RestFiles.ServiceInterface/FilesService.cs#L61

Cheers,

[daniel]

I transfer 40M (4M compressed) request only once a day to synchronize some data. All other transfers are quite small, I don't want to make additional file transfers when using WCF works just great already. 

What about: Global.asax and 

void Application_PreRequestHandlerExecute(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

...

}

Maybe I could do some decompression here? Do You think it's good place to start?

Cheers,

Daniel

[daniel]

   1: protected void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     if (this.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"] != null

   4:         && this.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"].Contains("gzip")

   5:         && this.Request.Path.ToLower().EndsWith(".aspx"))

   6:     {

   7:         this.Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(this.Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress, true);

   8:         this.Response.AddHeader("Content-encoding", "gzip");

   9:     }

  10: }

It's what I found for now.

[daniel]

public void Application_BeginRequest() 
{
   Request.Filter = ...
}

Will it work with ServiceStack?

[mythz]

I don't see why not, ServiceStack is just a thin layer over ASP.NET's IHttpHandlers - if this works for normal ASP.NET web apps then it should work for ServiceStack.

Cheers,

Demis

[daniel]

Ok, that's great ;) I needed some confirmation if Application_BeginRequest will not colide with ServiceStack.

Cheers,

Daniel