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HTTP Compression: Accept-Encoding, Content-Encoding gzip, Content-Length Surprises and Raw Bytes in requests

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Self-Hosting & Infra intermediate 5 min read $0.01 Updated 2026-10-20

Measured on a local server: a 901-byte JSON body sent as 408 gzip bytes with Content-Encoding gzip, requests returning 901 decoded bytes, raw stream reads of 408 bytes, and Accept-Encoding identity returning the uncompressed body.

See why response.content is longer than Content-Length, how requests decodes gzip automatically, how to read the raw compressed bytes and why Vary: Accept-Encoding matters for caches.

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#http#gzip#compression#requests#performance

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