This article shows how easy it is to extend Web API and provides an example of GZIP compression. Ove Andersen has created a cool NuGet package which makes it very is to use GZIP compression with any Web API Http request/response. This package implements both client and server message handlers which can be used for the whole service or as required.
Demo Code: https://github.com/damienbod/WebApiGzip
To use this package, install it from NuGet:
or
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.MessageHandlers.Compression/
Then add the message handler to the Web API config:
config.MessageHandlers.Insert(0, new ServerCompressionHandler(new GZipCompressor(), new DeflateCompressor()));
Now all Web API requests, will return a GZIP compressed response if requested in the header.
The NuGet package is very easy to use and the source code is also available:
https://github.com/azzlack/Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.MessageHandlers.Compression
The package can also be configured to only compress messages larger than a certain size, this is documented here.
Ben Foster also provides a nice implementation and also a good article showing how you could implement GZIP compression with Web API.
http://benfoster.io/blog/aspnet-web-api-compression
As you can see, Web API is easy to extend, you can use a finished NuGet package to implement GZIP for your service, or you can implement it yourself following the code examples.
You have the choice. Thanks to the 2 authors for the GZIP implementations.
Links:
https://github.com/azzlack/Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.MessageHandlers.Compression
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.MessageHandlers.Compression/
Software Engineering 
Reblogged this on Dinesh Ram Kali..
Reblogged this on jogendra@.net.
Hi Damien, Thanks a lot for your post. I tried to follow all the steps mentioned in the post and found that compression is working fine with the default setting.
config.MessageHandlers.Insert(0, new ServerCompressionHandler(new GZipCompressor(), new DeflateCompressor()));
But once I set the threshold value as per the advanced usage details :
config.MessageHandlers.Insert(0, new ServerCompressionHandler(4096, new GZipCompressor(), new DeflateCompressor()));
I see in the Fiddler that the response is not getting compressed even if the Content-Length is more than 4096 bytes.
Can you please help me to know is there any else I am missing out anything else.
Hi
post your question/bug here
https://github.com/azzlack/Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.MessageHandlers.Compression/issues
I’ll have a look once I get some time, I’m a bit busy at the moment
Gruss Damien
your project is not working
responses are sent without compression
Hi Eric, strange, I’ll have a look, haven’t changed anything here in a long time.
Greetings Damien