Compression

The encode directive compresses responses before they leave raddex. It supports three algorithms — gzip, zstd, and Brotli (br) — and applies to both proxied responses and static files.

How it works

encode takes algorithms in priority order. raddex negotiates against the client’s Accept-Encoding header and uses the first algorithm the client also supports:

example.com {
    encode br zstd gzip
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8080
}

Here a client that accepts Brotli gets br; one that doesn’t falls back to zstd, then gzip. A client that supports none of them gets the response uncompressed.

The directive applies to whichever terminal serves the block — proxied APIs and static files alike:

static.example.com {
    root /var/www/html
    file_server
    encode zstd gzip
}

Choosing algorithms

Algorithm	Trade-off
br (Brotli)	Best compression ratio; universally supported by modern browsers
zstd	Fast, strong compression; supported by current browsers and many HTTP clients
gzip	The baseline; supported everywhere

A good default for web traffic is encode br zstd gzip. encode never applies to a 101 (upgraded, e.g. WebSocket) response.

What you get

curl -H 'Host: static.example.com' -H 'Accept-Encoding: br' \
     http://127.0.0.1:8090/app.js -sD - -o /dev/null

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-encoding: br

file_server honors the same negotiation, so it serves index.html compressed and skips compression for clients that don’t ask for it.