Enabling gzip compression for Jboss

edit jboss\server\default\deploy\jbossweb.sar\server.xml

Edit this:

<Connector protocol="HTTP/1.1" port="8080" address="${jboss.bind.address}" 
           connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />

to be more like this:

<Connector protocol="HTTP/1.1" port="8080" address="${jboss.bind.address}" compression="on" 
compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/css,text/javascript, application/x-javascript,application/javascript" 
connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />

You can refer to connector config info for further details please see: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/config/http.html

To add gzip compression in JBoss 7.1.1, you can edit standalone/configuration/standalone.xml and add:

       ...
    </extensions>

    <system-properties>
        <property name="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol.COMPRESSION" value="on"/>
        <property name="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol.COMPRESSION_MIME_TYPES" value="text/javascript,text/css,text/html"/>
    </system-properties>

Restart the server and check with developer tools or in the HTTP header if it is enabled.

The file is under server.xml and you are correct in stating that you have to updated the http connector.

Following link is info for tomcat, but same applies to JBoss except location of server.xml file. I believe you need to update the server.xml under deploy\jbossweb.sar\

http://viralpatel.net/blogs/2008/11/enable-gzip-compression-in-tomcat.html

In Jboss EAP 7.0 this worked for me:

edit: Standalone.xml

<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:undertow:1.2">   <!-- SEARCH FOR THIS: urn:jboss:domain:undertow -->
  <buffer-cache name="default"/>  
  <server name="default-server">  
  <http-listener name="default" socket-binding="http"/>  
  <host name="default-host" alias="localhost">  
  (...)

  <!-- ADD THIS FOR GZIP COMPRESSION -->
  <filter-ref name="gzipFilter" predicate="exists['%{o,Content-Type}'] and regex[pattern='(?:application/javascript|text/css|text/html|text/xml|application/json)(;.*)?', value=%{o,Content-Type}, full-match=true]"/>  
  <!-- /GZIP COMPRESSION -->

  </host>  
  </server>  
(...)  
  <filters>  
  (...)  

  <!-- ADD THIS FOR GZIP COMPRESSION -->
  <gzip name="gzipFilter"/>  
  <!-- /GZIP COMPRESSION -->

  </filters>  
</subsystem>

Restart the server