Compression Headers

1. Summary

Send and receive compressed payload, using the Accept-Encoding and Content-Encoding HTTP headers.

Meilisearch supports gzip, deflate and brotli compression methods.

2. Motivation

Compression HTTP headers can be used to improve transfer speed and to reduce bandwidth consumption by sending/receiving compressed, smaller payload.

3. Functional Specification

3.1. Supported Compression Algorithms

name
gzip
br (refers to brotli)
deflate

3.2. Sending a compressed payload

Specify the algorithm used to compress the payload being sent to Meilisearch within the Content-Encoding header.

See RFC9110 (opens new window).

3.2.1 Example with gzip

cat ~/movies.json | gzip | curl -X POST 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/documents' --data-binary @- -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Content-Encoding: gzip'

3.3. Receiving a compressed response

Specify to Meilisearch the compression methods to use by order of preference when sending a response to a client within the Accept-Encoding header.

See RFC9110 (opens new window).

3.3.1. Example with gzip

curl -sH 'Accept-encoding: gzip' 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search' | gunzip -

4. Technical Details

N/A

5. Future Possibilities

• Support zstd compression method.