Why can't I properly serve a file compressed with gzencode()?

Question

PHP

There are a bunch of html files, completely static. I want to compress all of them using gzencode () and then directly give it to the user. And with direct feedback, the plug comes out. I prescribe the directive in .htaccess:
Header set Content-Encoding: gzip
In the browser I see that the desired header is given to me, but decoding does not occur.
And at the same time, here is the code:

$content = file_get_contents('./test.shtml');
$content = gzencode($content, 9);
header('content-encoding: gzip'); 
echo $content;

absolutely normal gives the content of the file. I checked the list of headers for both methods, everything is identical.
I encode the test file like this:

$content = file_get_contents('./test.shtml');
$content = gzencode($content, 9);
file_put_contents('./test_gz.shtml', $content);

Prompt in what there can be a business. Maybe I don't know some specifics?

Answer 1

In general, I figured it out myself. The method I needed did not want to work only with the shtml extension, apparently some kind of muddled with SSI.

Answer 2

apache itself can do this - httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_deflate.html. why any extra movement?

Answer 3

Putting a header does not mean compressing. Google SetOutputFilter DEFLATE