Delete 'Accept-Encoding' header on proxy requests

[diegossilveira]

I was looking at proxy.js source code and found the following statement:

// lib/proxy.js file, line 69
if (settings.onResponse) {
   delete options.headers['accept-encoding'];
}

Removing the 'Accept-Encoding' from the headers that are forwarded to the upstream endpoint can be harmful, since response compression is quietly disabled. Why is this done?

I can imagine the short answer is: "If the developer wants to handle the response himself, Hapi can help him disabling the response compression". If so, I believe it's not a good idea to consider the presence of an onResponse handler to disable response compression. Wouldn't it be better creating a new option on proxy, like "disableResponseCompression: true|false"?

[hueniverse]

This is mostly due to historical reasons. It used to be that when you define an onResponse handler, hapi gave you back the payload, not the res stream. So this was needed to solve encoding while hapi didn't know how to decode the response for you.

It doesn't make much sense now, but at the same time, removing it isn't ideal. I think we need a new option that lets you set any other encoding you accept and the default will be to remove it. This way it is backwards compatible for now.

[diegossilveira]

Great! I believe that creating a new option would solve the problem.
Thank you very much!

[hueniverse]

Going the the flip version of a new acceptEncoding option that defaults to true.

[lock]

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