Files
PaperClipAI/server/src/__tests__/api-compression.test.ts
T
DottaandClaude Fable 5 23f34491e2 Fix apiCompression corrupting and dropping Better Auth responses for gzip clients (#9381)
## Thinking Path

> - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for
work
> - Its server fronts every API route — including Better Auth sign-in —
with Express middleware, and #9190 added an `apiCompression` middleware
that gzips JSON responses over 1KB
> - That middleware buffers `res.write()` chunks with `String(chunk)`,
but Better Auth (via better-call) streams `Uint8Array` chunks and
commits headers with `writeHead()` before streaming
> - `String(Uint8Array)` serializes the body to comma-separated decimal
bytes (~3.4x inflation), and once the inflated body crossed the 1KB
threshold, `setHeader()` threw `ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT` and the catch
handler destroyed the socket
> - Every real browser sends `Accept-Encoding: gzip`, so sign-in
returned zero bytes (`net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE` / "Failed to fetch"),
while curl without `Accept-Encoding` worked — making the bug easy to
misdiagnose as a client or network issue
> - This pull request makes the middleware byte-safe for `Uint8Array`
chunks, passes through responses whose headers are already committed,
and falls back to the uncompressed body instead of destroying the
connection when compression fails
> - The benefit is that browser sign-in (and any other streamed
binary-chunk response) works again for gzip-accepting clients, with
regression tests locking in all three behaviors

## Linked Issues or Issue Description

Refs #9190 (introduced the `apiCompression` middleware).

No public GitHub issue exists; bug description:

- **What happened:** Sign-in from any real browser failed with
`net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE` / "Failed to fetch". The server logged
`ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT` from the compression middleware and destroyed
the response socket, so zero bytes reached the client.
- **Expected:** `/api/auth/*` responses are delivered intact regardless
of the client's `Accept-Encoding`.
- **Steps to reproduce:** Run the server with API compression active,
open the web UI in a browser (which sends `Accept-Encoding: gzip`), and
attempt email/password sign-in. The auth response body exceeds ~300
bytes, so after the ~3.4x stringification inflation it crosses the
1024-byte compression threshold and the response is destroyed. `curl`
without `Accept-Encoding` succeeds against the same server.
- **Scope:** Any route that streams `Uint8Array` chunks and/or commits
headers via `writeHead()` before writing — in practice all Better Auth
routes served through better-call.

## What Changed

- `server/src/middleware/api-compression.ts`:
- Buffer `res.write()` chunks with a `toBodyBuffer()` helper that
converts `Uint8Array`/`ArrayBuffer` views via `Buffer.from()` instead of
`String()`, so binary chunks are preserved byte-for-byte.
- Pass responses through untouched once headers are already sent
(`writeHead()`-style streaming), since compression headers can no longer
be set at that point.
- On any compression failure, write the original uncompressed body
instead of calling `res.destroy()`, so clients get a valid (just
uncompressed) response rather than a dropped connection.
- `server/src/__tests__/api-compression.test.ts`: three new regression
tests — small `writeHead`+`Uint8Array` responses are delivered
byte-for-byte, large ones no longer drop the connection, and
`Uint8Array` JSON bodies gzip without corruption (includes
`/api/auth-bridge` and `/api/uint8-json` test routes mirroring
better-call's streaming pattern).

## Verification

- `cd server && pnpm vitest run src/__tests__/api-compression.test.ts` —
10/10 passing (7 pre-existing + 3 new regression tests).
- Manual: with the fix, browser sign-in against a dev instance succeeds
for gzip-accepting clients; before the fix the same request returned
`net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE`.

## Risks

- Low risk. The middleware still compresses large text/JSON responses
exactly as before; the changes only affect paths that previously
produced corrupted or destroyed responses.
- Behavioral shift: responses whose headers were already committed are
now delivered uncompressed instead of being (incorrectly) buffered —
this is strictly less surprising than the previous corrupted output.
- Failure-path shift: a compression error now yields an uncompressed 200
response instead of a dropped connection.

## Model Used

- Claude Fable 5 (`claude-fable-5`, Anthropic), extended thinking
enabled, running via Claude Code / Paperclip agent harness with tool use
(shell, file edit, test execution).

## Checklist

- [x] I have included a thinking path that traces from project context
to this change
- [x] I have specified the model used (with version and capability
details)
- [x] I have checked ROADMAP.md and confirmed this PR does not duplicate
planned core work
- [x] I have searched GitHub for duplicate or related PRs and linked
them above
- [x] I have either (a) linked existing issues with `Fixes: #` / `Closes
#` / `Refs #` OR (b) described the issue in-PR following the relevant
issue template
- [x] I have not referenced internal/instance-local Paperclip issues or
links (only public GitHub `#NNN` / `github.com/paperclipai/paperclip`
URLs)
- [x] My branch name describes the change (e.g. `docs/...`, `fix/...`)
and contains no internal Paperclip ticket id or instance-derived details
- [x] I have run tests locally and they pass
- [x] I have added or updated tests where applicable
- [x] I have updated relevant documentation to reflect my changes
- [x] I have considered and documented any risks above
- [x] All Paperclip CI gates are green
- [x] Greptile is 5/5 with no open P2s, recommendations, or follow-ups
- [x] I will address all Greptile and reviewer comments before
requesting merge

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-10 16:04:29 -05:00

242 lines
8.9 KiB
TypeScript

import express from "express";
import { createServer } from "node:http";
import { request as httpRequest } from "node:http";
import type { AddressInfo } from "node:net";
import { deflateSync, gunzipSync, inflateSync } from "node:zlib";
import { afterEach, describe, expect, it } from "vitest";
import { apiCompression } from "../middleware/api-compression.js";
type RawResponse = {
statusCode: number;
headers: Record<string, string | string[] | undefined>;
body: Buffer;
};
const openServers: Array<ReturnType<typeof createServer>> = [];
afterEach(async () => {
await Promise.all(openServers.splice(0).map((server) => new Promise<void>((resolve, reject) => {
server.close((err) => err ? reject(err) : resolve());
})));
});
function issueListFixture(count: number) {
return Array.from({ length: count }, (_, index) => ({
id: `issue-${index}`,
companyId: "company-1",
identifier: `PAP-${index + 1}`,
title: `Synthetic issue list row ${index}`,
description: "repeatable payload used to prove API compression on the hot issue-list response",
status: index % 2 === 0 ? "in_progress" : "todo",
priority: "medium",
assigneeAgentId: index % 3 === 0 ? "agent-1" : null,
assigneeUserId: null,
parentId: null,
projectId: "project-1",
goalId: "goal-1",
createdAt: "2026-07-03T00:00:00.000Z",
updatedAt: "2026-07-03T00:00:00.000Z",
successfulRunHandoff: null,
activeRecoveryAction: null,
}));
}
async function requestRaw(app: express.Express, path: string, headers: Record<string, string> = {}): Promise<RawResponse> {
const server = createServer(app);
openServers.push(server);
await new Promise<void>((resolve) => {
server.listen(0, "127.0.0.1", resolve);
});
const address = server.address() as AddressInfo;
return await new Promise<RawResponse>((resolve, reject) => {
const req = httpRequest({
host: "127.0.0.1",
port: address.port,
path,
headers,
}, (res) => {
const chunks: Buffer[] = [];
res.on("data", (chunk) => {
chunks.push(Buffer.isBuffer(chunk) ? chunk : Buffer.from(chunk));
});
res.on("end", () => {
resolve({
statusCode: res.statusCode ?? 0,
headers: res.headers,
body: Buffer.concat(chunks),
});
});
});
req.on("error", reject);
req.end();
});
}
function buildApp() {
const app = express();
app.use("/api", apiCompression());
app.get("/api/companies/:companyId/issues", (_req, res) => {
res.json(issueListFixture(500));
});
app.get("/api/small", (_req, res) => {
res.json({ ok: true });
});
app.get("/api/encoded", (_req, res) => {
const body = Buffer.from(JSON.stringify({ already: "encoded" }));
res.setHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
res.setHeader("Content-Encoding", "deflate");
res.end(deflateSync(body));
});
app.get("/api/etag", (_req, res) => {
res.setHeader("ETag", "\"fixture-etag\"");
res.json(issueListFixture(500));
});
app.get("/api/download", (_req, res) => {
res.setHeader("Content-Type", "application/octet-stream");
res.write("chunk-one:");
res.end("chunk-two");
});
app.get("/api/json-download", (_req, res) => {
const chunk = JSON.stringify(issueListFixture(500));
res.setHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
res.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=\"issues.json\"");
res.write(chunk.slice(0, chunk.length / 2));
res.end(chunk.slice(chunk.length / 2));
});
// Mirrors better-call's setResponse (Better Auth sign-in/sign-up): headers
// are committed with writeHead() first, then the web-stream body arrives as
// Uint8Array chunks.
app.get("/api/auth-bridge", (req, res) => {
const body = JSON.stringify({
token: "t".repeat(Number(req.query.pad ?? 0)),
user: { name: "Dotta", email: "dotta@example.test" },
});
res.setHeader("content-type", "application/json");
res.setHeader("set-cookie", "workspace.session_token=abc; Max-Age=604800; Path=/; HttpOnly; SameSite=Lax");
res.writeHead(200);
const bytes = new TextEncoder().encode(body);
res.write(bytes.subarray(0, 16));
res.write(bytes.subarray(16));
res.end();
});
app.get("/api/uint8-json", (req, res) => {
const body = JSON.stringify(issueListFixture(Number(req.query.count ?? 1)));
res.setHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
res.end(new TextEncoder().encode(body));
});
return app;
}
describe("API compression middleware", () => {
it("compresses the hot 500-item issue-list response with gzip when the client supports it", async () => {
const uncompressed = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/companies/company-1/issues?limit=500");
const compressed = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/companies/company-1/issues?limit=500", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip",
});
expect(uncompressed.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(compressed.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(compressed.headers["content-encoding"]).toBe("gzip");
expect(compressed.headers["vary"]).toContain("Accept-Encoding");
expect(JSON.parse(gunzipSync(compressed.body).toString("utf8"))).toHaveLength(500);
expect(compressed.body.byteLength).toBeLessThan(uncompressed.body.byteLength / 5);
});
it("uses deflate when that is the supported content encoding", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/companies/company-1/issues?limit=500", {
"accept-encoding": "deflate",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBe("deflate");
expect(JSON.parse(inflateSync(res.body).toString("utf8"))).toHaveLength(500);
});
it("keeps small JSON responses uncompressed for compatibility", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/small", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip, deflate",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBeUndefined();
expect(JSON.parse(res.body.toString("utf8"))).toEqual({ ok: true });
});
it("does not double-compress responses that already set Content-Encoding", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/encoded", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip, deflate",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBe("deflate");
expect(JSON.parse(inflateSync(res.body).toString("utf8"))).toEqual({ already: "encoded" });
});
it("weakens strong ETag validators on compressed JSON responses", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/etag", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBe("gzip");
expect(res.headers.etag).toBe("W/\"fixture-etag\"");
expect(JSON.parse(gunzipSync(res.body).toString("utf8"))).toHaveLength(500);
});
it("passes streamed non-JSON responses through without compression", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/download", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip, deflate",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBeUndefined();
expect(res.body.toString("utf8")).toBe("chunk-one:chunk-two");
});
it("passes streamed JSON attachment downloads through without compression", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/json-download", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip, deflate",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-disposition"]).toBe("attachment; filename=\"issues.json\"");
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBeUndefined();
expect(JSON.parse(res.body.toString("utf8"))).toHaveLength(500);
});
it("delivers small writeHead+Uint8Array auth responses byte-for-byte", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/auth-bridge", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip, deflate",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["set-cookie"]).toBeDefined();
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBeUndefined();
expect(JSON.parse(res.body.toString("utf8")).user.email).toBe("dotta@example.test");
});
it("does not drop the connection for large writeHead+Uint8Array auth responses", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/auth-bridge?pad=2000", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip, deflate",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBeUndefined();
const parsed = JSON.parse(res.body.toString("utf8"));
expect(parsed.token).toHaveLength(2000);
expect(parsed.user.email).toBe("dotta@example.test");
});
it("compresses large Uint8Array bodies without corrupting them", async () => {
const res = await requestRaw(buildApp(), "/api/uint8-json?count=500", {
"accept-encoding": "gzip",
});
expect(res.statusCode).toBe(200);
expect(res.headers["content-encoding"]).toBe("gzip");
expect(JSON.parse(gunzipSync(res.body).toString("utf8"))).toHaveLength(500);
});
});