HTTP/2 Server Push on Netlify | Hacker News Reader

HTTP/2 Server Push on Netlify

netlify.com

64 pointscalavera23 comments

> It’s important to understand that HTTP/2 requires secure connectivity. Only websites with HTTPS enabled can take advantage of HTTP/2 and its performance optimizations, like server push and header compression.

Pedantically, this is not correct. HTTP/2 does not mandate any encryption. But, all the browser vendors only support HTTP/2 with TLS. https://http2.github.io/faq/#does-http2-require-encryption

If you assume the second sentence explains the first, then this is correct - only websites (i.e something designed to be consumed by browsers) with HTTPS can take advantage of HTTP/2.

This is true, but no mandate on encryption in the HTTP/2 standard was an deliberate decision, one of the very few differences between HTTP/2 and SPDY. But yes, practically, you can't use HTTP/2 without encryption nowadays.

How do people go about sending Link headers / configuring server push for resources with a changing hash in their filenames?

For example if you have your app.ab9a9a09fe9.js file, but then the next deploy you have your app.ba293dcde.js file... can you just set the resource to app.*.js somehow?

If you can write a <script> tag that references app.ab9a9a09fe9.js, presumably you can write a HTTP header that references that same file, no?

What about a static website served through nginx, for example?

I'm actually just doing that right now (changing my static website to work with Netlify's Push). Presumably, your base HTML looks something like this:

  <link href="{{ "main.css"|asseturl }}" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Then, your _headers.j2 file should look like this:

  /*
    Link: <{{ "main.css"|asseturl }}>; rel=preload; as=stylesheet

Which will just be replaced with the correct value, same as in your HTML template.

For example: a SPA webpack setup using html-webpack-plugin which generates the <script> tags in index.html for the different assets, later served by nginx or similar.

How does one tell nginx the names of the files to push if they are generated dynamically? You have to put the names in a separate file and then somehow configure the server using that file?

this webpack plugin might help you: https://gist.github.com/Kamshak/35630ec21df8dca27de3bb915f2d...

I have no idea why the original comment by the author is shadow banned.

You can make it part of your build process to generate a file with the headers needed, and during deploy it gets copied and/or configures the web server/platform you're running on.

I suppose you are using webpack, i have just written a small plugin for this (assumes an SPA, writes the same js/css to /*): https://gist.github.com/Kamshak/35630ec21df8dca27de3bb915f2d...

> Developers love using the CLI because everything can be done from the command line.

What? Do users also love the UI because everything can be done by the user?

This is welcome, but doesn't seem to be ready. My site broke with SPDY errors (wth?) when I enabled this.

Hey StavrosK, don't hesitate to reach out to Netlify support. I'd love to take a look at your site to figure out what's going on there.

Yep, I already talked to Chris about it, thanks! I talked to you guys a week ago about HTTP/2 Push, I didn't know you'd have it ready so soon. I'm eager to get this working on stavros.io, so please feel free to email me so we can debug this!

I just deployed a change that we think it should fix the problem in your site, we're going to keep an eye on it \o/

How does Netlify handle caching of push file? I would love to push my global.css and global.js; however, I don't want those files to be pushed on every subsequent request.

Do any browsers already provide a way to refuse pushed resources?

You'd have to handle this in service workers. You want this: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-cache-di...

Why would you need this? The use case of Server Push is to download resources earlier than a browser can request them, but will eventually require anyway.

What are you hoping to refuse?

Thanks for the reply, and good point. I guess I feel uneasy about letting the server "push" at will, for instance when dealing with mobile data plans. But come to think about it, I don't have much control on what I'll get once I visit a website.

"You can read this article in the next version of Smashing Magazine, completely hosted on Netlify."

No actually quite a few resources are served by third parties.

I read this as Netflix and was very confused for a while.

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