How to enable GZIP Compression in Tomcat, Jetty, GlassFish and Payara

GZIP Compression is a widely supported method of reducing the file size of the content hosted by your Java Application Server. This reduces bandwidth usage and improves load times. We recommend enabling GZIP compression for .html, .css, .js, .svg, and .json files.

Follow the instructions below to enable GZIP compression of static assets hosted by Tomcat, Jetty, GlassFish or Payara.

GZIP compression on Tomcat

1. Open conf/server.xml
2. Find <service name="Catalina">
3. Find the <Connector /> tag inside it
4. Add the following attributes to the Connector tag:

   
    compression="on"
    compressionMinSize="2048"
    noCompressionUserAgents=""
    compressableMimeType="text/html,text/css,text/plain,text/javascript,application/javascript,application/json,image/svg+xml"
   

5. Restart the server and you’re done

GZIP compression on Jetty

1. Open etc/jetty.xml
2. Find the <Configure id="Server" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server"> tag
3. Add in the following lines inside the Configure tag

   <Call name="insertHandler">
       <Arg>
           <New id="GzipHandler" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.gzip.GzipHandler">
               <Set name="minGzipSize"><Property name="jetty.gzip.minGzipSize" deprecated="gzip.minGzipSize" default="2048"/></Set>
               <Set name="checkGzExists"><Property name="jetty.gzip.checkGzExists" deprecated="gzip.checkGzExists" default="false"/></Set>
               <Set name="compressionLevel"><Property name="jetty.gzip.compressionLevel" deprecated="gzip.compressionLevel" default="-1"/></Set>
               <Set name="inflateBufferSize"><Property name="jetty.gzip.inflateBufferSize" default="0"/></Set>
               <Set name="syncFlush"><Property name="jetty.gzip.syncFlush" default="false" /></Set>
                 
               <Set name="excludedAgentPatterns">
                   <Array type="String">
                       <Item><Property name="jetty.gzip.excludedUserAgent" deprecated="gzip.excludedUserAgent" default=".*MSIE.6.0.*"/></Item>
                   </Array>
               </Set>
                 
               <Set name="includedMethodList"><Property name="jetty.gzip.includedMethodList" default="GET" /></Set>
               <Set name="excludedMethodList"><Property name="jetty.gzip.excludedMethodList" default="" /></Set>
           </New>
       </Arg>
   </Call>
   

4. Restart the server and you’re done

GZIP compression on GlassFish

1. Open the GlassFish admin console (localhost:4848 for example)
2. Go to the HTTP settings via: Configurations → server-config → Network Config → Network Listeners → http-listener-1/http-listener-2 (change the settings in both of these) → HTTP (tab at the top of the page)
3. Edit the ‘Compression’ setting to be ‘on’
4. Change the ‘Compressible Mime Types’ to use

   text/html,text/css,text/plain,text/javascript,application/javascript,application/json,image/svg+xml

5. Click save and you’re done

GZIP compression on Payara

1. Open the Payara admin console (localhost:4848 for example)
2. Go to the HTTP settings via: Configurations → server-config → Network Config → Network Listeners → http-listener-1/http-listener-2 (change the settings in both of these) → HTTP (tab at the top of the page)
3. Edit the ‘Compression’ setting to be ‘on’
4. Change the ‘Compressible Mime Types’ to use

   text/html,text/css,text/plain,text/javascript,application/javascript,application/json,image/svg+xml

5. Click save and you’re done

You can read our other article to know how to enable GZIP compression on Apache and NGINX. You can also read this article learn more about GZIP compression and its advantages.

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