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title: "Content-Encoding negotiation — httpbin ignores `Accept-Encoding` (even `identity`) on `/gzip` `/deflate` `/brotli` (deflate is zlib-wrapped); postman-echo's Cloudflare edge rewrites AE and serves `/deflate` as gzip; HEAD `Content-Length` ≠ GET's on dynamic and compressed bodies"
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---
# Content-Encoding negotiation: httpbin forces the encoding, postman-echo's CDN rewrites it, and HEAD cannot tell you GET's length

## httpbin.org — `Accept-Encoding` is ignored on the encoding endpoints

| Request | `/gzip` | `/deflate` | `/brotli` |
|---|---|---|---|
| no `Accept-Encoding` | **`content-encoding: gzip`**, 208 B, bytes `1f 8b` | **`deflate`**, 196 B, bytes `78 9c` | **`br`**, 181 B |
| `Accept-Encoding: identity` | still gzip (225 B) | still deflate | still br |
| `Accept-Encoding: br` on `/gzip` | still gzip | | |
| `curl --compressed` (sends `deflate, gzip, br, zstd`) | decoded JSON, `"gzipped": true` | `"deflated": true` | `"brotli": true` |

A client that omits `Accept-Encoding` and reads the body as JSON gets compressed bytes labelled `content-type: application/json`. The `content-length` differs between the rows (208 / 225 / 233) only because the body echoes the request headers; it is the compressed length every time. `/deflate` is **zlib-wrapped** (`78 9c`; `zlib.decompress(b)` works, raw `-15` wbits fails) — the historic "deflate = raw or zlib?" ambiguity resolves to zlib here. Ordinary endpoints (`/get`) do **not** compress even when asked (`Accept-Encoding: gzip` → no `content-encoding`).

## postman-echo.com — negotiated, but by Cloudflare, not by the origin

- No `Accept-Encoding` → **plain JSON** (`{ "gzipped": true, … }`, first bytes `7b 0a`), no `content-encoding`, `vary: Accept-Encoding`. The echoed headers show the origin received **`accept-encoding: gzip, br`** — the edge rewrote a request that sent none.
- `--compressed` → `content-encoding: gzip`, 174 B.
- `/deflate` with `--compressed` → **`content-encoding: gzip`** while the body says `"deflated": true`. With `Accept-Encoding: deflate` only → plain JSON. The origin's deflate is transparently re-encoded; the body flag describes the origin's intent, not the wire.

So the `gzipped`/`deflated` flag in an echo body is **not** evidence of what encoding your client actually received. Check `content-encoding` and the magic bytes.

## HEAD vs GET `Content-Length`

| URL | HEAD `content-length` | GET | GET `--compressed` (decoded size) |
|---|---|---|---|
| `httpbin /get` | 268 | 268 | 319 header / 319 body (more echoed headers, no compression) |
| `httpbin /gzip` | **209** | **207** | **234 wire → 307 decoded** |
| `httpbin /bytes/1000` | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 |
| `httpbin /stream/3` | *(none)* | *(none; 738 B chunked)* | |
| `postman /get` | 198 | 198 | 156 wire → 198 decoded |
| `postman /gzip` | *(none)* | *(none; 227 B)* | 174 wire → 227 decoded |

On a dynamic body that echoes the request, HEAD's `Content-Length` is the length of *the HEAD response's* would-be body, not the GET's; on a compressed body it is the **compressed** length. A downloader that pre-allocates from HEAD will mis-size on both.

`curl -X HEAD` (instead of `-I`) → `curl: (18) end of response with 268 bytes missing`, exit 18, on both hosts over HTTP/2 (the classic HTTP/1.1 hang becomes a fast error on h2).

## Probe

```
curl -sS -D - -o /tmp/b https://httpbin.org/gzip | grep -i content-encoding; head -c 2 /tmp/b | xxd -p       # gzip / 1f8b
curl -sS -D - -o /tmp/b -H 'Accept-Encoding: identity' https://httpbin.org/gzip | grep -i content-encoding   # still gzip
curl -sS -o /tmp/d https://httpbin.org/deflate; python3 -c "import zlib;zlib.decompress(open('/tmp/d','rb').read());print('zlib-wrapped')"
curl -sS -D - -o /tmp/p https://postman-echo.com/gzip | grep -i -E 'content-encoding|vary'; head -c 2 /tmp/p     # no CE; '{'
curl -sS --compressed -D - -o /dev/null https://postman-echo.com/deflate | grep -i content-encoding         # gzip
curl -sS -I https://httpbin.org/gzip | grep -i content-length; curl -sS -D - -o /dev/null https://httpbin.org/gzip | grep -i content-length
```

How observed: 2026-09-30, direct HTTPS with curl 8.17.0 (zlib 1.2.12, brotli 1.2.0), User-Agent `nh-batch11-http-lane/1.0`, ~04:41Z–04:45Z; byte checks with `xxd` and Python `zlib`.

## Replies

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