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Link Header  

Magento 2 module that lets any template declare resources to fetch early (LCP image, preconnect to a third-party origin...) and sends them as an HTTP Link response header.

Why choose this extension?

The image that holds the Largest Contentful Paint (hero banner, first product image, article header...) is usually rendered after the header, the menu and the filters. On a Magento page, that is often several hundred kilobytes of HTML: the browser only discovers the image once it has parsed them.

A Link header is read as soon as the response headers arrive, before the first byte of HTML. The browser starts downloading the image right away. Measured on Magento 2 / Hyvä product and listing pages (mobile, Slow 4G, CPU 4x), with images served from a CDN: LCP −330 to −450 ms.

Declaring the link from the template that renders the image means the URL, the breakpoints and the priority stay in one place, and only the pages that display the image preload it.

Features

• Declare links from any template or PHP class through a shared view model.
• Image preload helper (rel=preload; as=image; nopush by default), with media, imagesrcset, imagesizes, fetchpriority...
• Any other link: preconnect, dns-prefetch, preload of a font or a script...
• Full page cache and Varnish compatible: the header is part of the cached response.
• Block HTML cache compatible: links declared inside a cached block are stored with it and replayed when the block is served from the cache (see How it works).
• Identical links are only sent once.
• Line breaks are stripped from URLs and values (no header injection, no rejected response).

Installation

In production mode, run php bin/magento setup:di:compile: the module declares a plugin.

Usage

Preload the LCP image (Hyvä)

Responsive image

The media queries must mirror the <picture> sources: otherwise the browser preloads an image it does not display, and downloads two images.

imagesrcset and imagesizes are supported as well, see Preload responsive images.

Other links

A null value renders the attribute without value (nopush). An array of URLs adds one link per URL, with the same attributes.

Without Hyvä (Luma)

Pass the view model as a block argument in the layout:

Or inject Blackbird\LinkHeader\ViewModel\LinkHeader in a PHP class: it is a shared instance, every caller adds to the same header.

How it works

1. Collect. Blackbird\LinkHeader\ViewModel\LinkHeader is a shared object. Each addLinkHeader() / addImagePreloadHeader() call, made while the page renders, adds a link to it.
2. Send. On controller_front_send_response_before (frontend area), the AddLinkHeaderToResponse observer formats the links and sets the Link header on the response. The full page cache (built-in or Varnish) caches the response with its headers, so a cached page keeps its preloads.

3. Survive the block HTML cache. Links are declared by templates, and a block served from the block HTML cache does not execute its templates, nor those of its children. Without care, a cached parent block (a CMS content, a product list...) loses the preloads of its images, and the full page cache then stores the page without them. It typically happens after a full page cache purge, while the block HTML cache is still warm.

   To prevent it, Blackbird\LinkHeader\Model\BlockCacheLinks follows every block that has a cache lifetime:

   • view_block_abstract_to_html_before: remember how many links were declared so far.
   • Template::fetchView() (plugin): a template is only fetched on a block cache miss, so the block is flagged as rendered.
   • view_block_abstract_to_html_after:
     • rendered (cache miss): the links declared while rendering the block, its children included, are saved in the cache under LINK_HEADER_<block cache key>, with the block cache tags (plus block_html) and lifetime. Cleaning the block HTML cache cleans them too;
     • not rendered (cache hit): the saved links are added again.

   Nested cached blocks work the same way: a parent saves the links of its children, replayed or rendered.

Any error in this process is logged and never breaks the page rendering.

Good practices

• Only preload what is above the fold and displayed: the LCP image, maybe a hero font. A preload competes for the bandwidth with the render-blocking CSS: preloading everything slows the first render down.
• Keep loading="eager" (never lazy) on a preloaded image, and use the same fetchpriority.
• Preload the exact URL rendered in the HTML (same size, same query string), or the image is downloaded twice.
• Mirror the <picture> breakpoints in media.
• Same-origin images gain less than images served by a CDN or another domain: they share the HTML and CSS connection and bandwidth. Measure.

Limitations

• Frontend area only.
• Response headers have size limits (e.g. Varnish http_resp_hdr_len, 8 KB by default, nginx proxy_buffer_size, 4 or 8 KB). Keep the header to a few links.
• Two requests rendering the same cached block at the same time: the second one can read the block HTML before its links are saved, and serve that page once without the preload.

Tests

License

This module is licensed under the MIT License, see LICENSE.