Let us create a web server that serves contents after compressing it to the gzip format.
Listing 4.8 explains the HTTP compression as follows:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# Python Network Programming Cookbook -- Chapter - 4
# This program requires Python 3.5.2 or any later version
# It may run on any other version with/without modifications.
#
# Follow the comments inline to make it run on Python 2.7.x.
import argparse
import string
import os
import sys
import gzip
import io
# Comment out the above line and uncomment the below for Python 2.7.x.
#import cStringIO
from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer
# Comment out the above line and uncomment the below for Python 2.7.x.
#from BaseHTTPServer import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer
DEFAULT_HOST = '127.0.0.1'
DEFAULT_PORT = 8800
HTML_CONTENT = b"""<html><body><h1>Compressed Hello World!</h1></body></html>"""
# Comment out the above line and uncomment the below for Python 2.7.x.
#HTML_CONTENT = b"""<html><body><h1>Compressed Hello World!</h1></body></html>"""
class RequestHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
""" Custom request handler"""
def do_GET(self):
""" Handler for the GET requests """
self.send_response(200)
self.send_header('Content-type','text/html')
self.send_header('Content-Encoding','gzip')
zbuf = self.compress_buffer(HTML_CONTENT)
sys.stdout.write("Content-Encoding: gzip
")
self.send_header('Content-Length',len(zbuf))
self.end_headers()
# Send the message to browser
zbuf = self.compress_buffer(HTML_CONTENT)
sys.stdout.write("Content-Encoding: gzip
")
sys.stdout.write("Content-Length: %d
" % (len(zbuf)))
sys.stdout.write("
")
self.wfile.write(zbuf)
return
def compress_buffer(self, buf):
zbuf = io.BytesIO()
# Comment out the above line and uncomment the below for
Python 2.7.x.
#zbuf = cStringIO.StringIO()
zfile = gzip.GzipFile(mode = 'wb',
fileobj = zbuf, compresslevel = 6)
zfile.write(buf)
zfile.close()
return zbuf.getvalue()
if __name__ == '__main__':
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Simple HTTP
Server Example')
parser.add_argument('--port', action="store",
dest="port", type=int, default=DEFAULT_PORT)
given_args = parser.parse_args()
port = given_args.port
server_address = (DEFAULT_HOST, port)
server = HTTPServer(server_address, RequestHandler)
server.serve_forever()
You can execute this script and see the Compressed Hello World! text (as a result of the HTTP compression) on your browser screen when accessing http://localhost:8800 as follows:
$ python 4_8_http_compression.py localhost - - [22/Feb/2014 12:01:26] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 - Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 71 localhost - - [22/Feb/2014 12:01:26] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 200 - Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 71
The following screenshot illustrates serving compressed content by a web server:
Compressed Content in a Web Server