Optimizing HTTP server responses with GZIP compression

GZIP compression means sending the response to the client from the server in a .gzip format rather than sending a plain response and it’s always a good practice to send compressed responses if a client/browser supports it.

By sending a compressed response we save network bandwidth and download time eventually rendering the page faster. What happens in GZIP compression is the browser sends a request header telling the server it accepts compressed content (.gzip and .deflate) and if the server has the capability to send the response in compressed form then sends it. If the server supports compression then it sets Content-Encoding: gzip as a response header, otherwise it sends a plain response back to the client, which clearly means asking for a compressed response is only a request by the browser and not a demand. We will be using Gorilla’s handlers package to implement it in this recipe.