Optimizing Ajax applications automagically through Apache modules/Google mod_pagespeed

Optimizing Ajax applications automagically—without manual effort— is the most wanted tool for any developer. There are a few tools invented for that purpose. In this recipe, we'll see a few such automatic tools.

Getting ready

We'll require a web application running over an Apache web server. For automatic optimization, we need the following Apache modules:

• mod_deflate , available at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.html

• mod_expires, available at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_expires.html

• mod_pagespeed , available at http://code.google.com/p/modpagespeed/

How to do it...

We have to install these modules and then set up the configurations for them to automatically handle the requests. We'll see the configurations for each module:

1. mod_deflate:

   To enable automatic gzip handling for JavaScript, CSS, and HTML code, we can use AddOutputFilterByType and specify their MIME type:

   <IfModule...