e.Response.Content in an HTTPResponseHandler returning gzipped content in chrome

[Steve]

I have an HTTPResponseHandler defined that examines the content returned by the server, to see if the server has sent back the response I am waiting for. The response from the server forthe ContentEncoding parameter of the response is 'gzip'. In IE, I simply look at the string response from Encoding.ASCII.GetString(e.Response.Content) to see if it is the response from the server I am expecting, and all is well. However, when the browser is Chrome, the Response.Content is not being decompressed by the WebAii proxy, and I get a gzipped string back - so I cannot tell if I'm getting what I want back from the server - is there something in the proxy I have to do to tell it to decompress the response?

[Cody]

Hi Steve,

First the WebAii proxy won't automatically decompress the response for you.  It may be that when using IE, depending on the version of IE you're using, the request header is telling the server it cannot accept compressed content.  As a result the server will not return compressed content. Then when you run the test in Chrome, the request header in Chrome tells the server it can accept compressed content and thus you are getting compressed content only in Chrome.

The easiest solution is to modify the outgoing header and remove the Accept-Encoding header from it. This will force the server to always send uncompressed content and you can easily parse the content.

The secondary solution is to write code to decompress the content. Something like this: 

string sBody;
 byte[] content = e.Response.GetUnchunkedContent();
string sEncoding = e.Response.Headers.GetValues("Content-Encoding");
 if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(sEncoding))
 {
   if ("gzip".Equals(sEncoding, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
   {
       MemoryStream decompressed = HttpUtilities.DecodeHttpContent("gzip", new MemoryStream(content));
       sBody = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decompressed.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)decompressed.Length);
   }
   else if ("deflate".Equals(sEncoding, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
   {
       MemoryStream decompressed = HttpUtilities.DecodeHttpContent("deflate", new MemoryStream(content));
       sBody = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decompressed.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)decompressed.Length);
   }
 }
 else
{
     sBody = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(content);
 }

Regards,
Cody
Telerik

 

 

[Steve]

Thank you - this is actually very helpful.  I guess I could set up a BeforeRequestListener to go in and strip the Accept-Encoding entry before the request actually goes to the server, couldn't I?

[Cody]

Hi Steve,

I am glad I could help! Yes you can use BeforeRequestListener to strip the Accept-Encoding entry.

Regards,
Cody
Telerik