GZipping content files in ASP.NET MVC 3

Question

I use the following attribute to decorate my BaseController class.

public class OutputCompressAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        string encodingsAccepted = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"];
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(encodingsAccepted))
            return;

        encodingsAccepted = encodingsAccepted.ToLowerInvariant();
        HttpResponseBase response = filterContext.HttpContext.Response;

        if (encodingsAccepted.Contains("gzip"))
        {
            response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "gzip");
            response.Filter = new GZipStream(response.Filter, CompressionMode.Compress);
        }
        else if (encodingsAccepted.Contains("deflate"))
        {
            response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "deflate");
            response.Filter = new DeflateStream(response.Filter, CompressionMode.Compress);
        }
    }
}

The issue is that, even though this works just fine for views and every action result, the attribute isn't working for stuff on the /Content folder of the project. I was wondering how I could make it so that files in the Content folder use a controller, or are bound somehow or hooked by something that allows me to append these filters to the response header.

Answer 1

Instead of writing such action filters and reinventing the wheels you could activate compression in IIS. You could do this for static and dynamic content.