Recently I have been working on a CSS & Javascript bundle called “Jon Kragh Starter” that I created as a starting point for all of my web projects.

I turned to Amazon’s CloudFront service as a CDN for my JS & CSS files.  Amazon won for me because I need SSL, and their offering was the cheapest in that regard.

My site is hosted on Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard with IIS 7.5.  Setting up Cloud Front was easy.  I simply pointed it to my site as a “Custom Origin” and then 10 minutes later, I was about to view my content under the URL that CloudFront generates.

The biggest challenge was to get CloudFront to serve my gzipped css and JavaScript.  CloudFront will serve Gzipped content if your origin server returns gzipped content to CloudFront, when CloudFront requests it with the user’s headers.

So first and foremost you need to ensure your origin server serves Gzipped content.  Here is an example at my origin.  Using Firebug’s network tab you can inspect the response headers:

The trick is to get CloudFront to serve the same Gzipped content.  It turns out that IIS will not return gzipped content to CloudFront in its default configuration.

Many thanks to this thread for pointing me to the correct solution.  What worked for me was to add the flags noCompressionForHttp10="false" noCompressionForProxies="false" to the server’s applicationHost.config file followed by a global “iisreset” from the command line.

Keep in mind during your testing, you will need to add new files to your server when you retry to see if you get your gzipped content from CloudFront.  This is because CloudFront caches your content.  There is a way to invalidate it through their API, but it’s much simpler to just add another js file (e.g. test with test1.js, then copy it & rename, and test with test2.js etc).

File:  C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config

(Unfortunately this did not work for me in a regular application level web.config and it needed to be done at the server level).

<httpCompression directory="%SystemDrive%\inetpub\temp\IIS Temporary Compressed Files" noCompressionForHttp10="false" noCompressionForProxies="false">
              <scheme name="gzip" dll="%Windir%\system32\inetsrv\gzip.dll" />

            <dynamicTypes>

                <add mimeType="text/*" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="message/*" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="false" />

            </dynamicTypes>

            <staticTypes>

                <add mimeType="text/*" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="message/*" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="application/atom+xml" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="application/xaml+xml" enabled="true" />

                <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="false" />

            </staticTypes>

        </httpCompression>

iisreset

CloudFront JavaScript Gzip Test

My Origin

https://www.jonkragh.com/starter/v/1.0/foot-complete.js

Cloudfront gzip encoded javascript

https://d2yljticlotdgz.cloudfront.net/starter/v/1.0/foot-complete.js

CloudFront CSS Gzip Test

Origin

https://www.jonkragh.com/starter/v/1.0/starter.css

Cloudfront

https://d2yljticlotdgz.cloudfront.net/starter/v/1.0/starter.css

I’m now enjoying blazing speeds.  Here is an example of Ctrl F5 the same JS file from my server (I am in NJ, my Server is in Denver).

Directly from my origin server

The same file from CloudFront

I see a problem time and time again with programmers wasting an incredible amount of time writing “good code” when in reality sometimes that “good code” isn’t good at all.  I fall prey to this as well, so I’m going to write up this post to put into words the code design decisions that I make subconsciously when trying to write “good code”.  That way I can analyze it, and refine it in the future.  This post is focused on the code itself, not whether or not the software product is of any use. At the end of the day the hardest thing to do is to create something that people want to use. That is a totally different topic.

What can I say? After 15 years of programming professionally, I’m a pretty confident coder. I work hard at it, and still find ways to improve everyday.

As Bradley Nowell so eloquently stated in “Love is What I got”….

“I can play the guitar like a mother f-in riot.” – Sublime

Well this is how I feel about code!

“I can rock the compiler like a mother f-in riot.” – Jon Kragh

Continue reading →

I am going to do a stream of consciousness every Friday for the next month and see how it goes. Once I wrote the post, I’m going to video tape myself talking about it.  So here it goes!

Here is a video about the post below.