Compression based on user agent type

WebSEAL returns compressed data to user agents that request them. A user agent is a client that initiates a request. Use the WebSEAL configuration file to explicitly enable or disable compression for various browsers. Examples of user agents include browsers, editors, spiders (web-traversing robots), or other tools. WebSEAL does not return compressed data to user agents that do not request it. However, some user agents request compressed data but do not know how to handle the data properly.

The following entry is the syntax.

The user_agent_pattern consists of wildcard patterns that match characters found in the user-agent header sent to WebSEAL. The value yes means to compress data that is returned to the browser. The value no means to return the data uncompressed.

When the user-agent header does not match any of the stanza entries in the WebSEAL configuration file, WebSEAL allows the accept-encoding header sent by the browser. For example, the following entry enables compression for Internet Explorer 6, but disables compression for all other browsers:

Parent topic: HTTP data compression