PHP virtual() not using mod_deflate in subrequest

Question

Hi,

I am using a custom PHP framework, which makes use of virtual() calls to serve files. The general idea is all URLs are rewritten to index.php which decides what resource was requested, then uses virtual() as a passthrough if the resource is images/ css / js.

This works quite well, apart from browser-side caching (which was fixed by setting headers manually) and gzip compression.

The mod_deflate page state that it is not run on internal subrequests, only after resource filters like PHP.

Is there any environment variable I can set to force mod_deflate to run on a specific subrequest?

I have tried output buffering the virtual call and using ob_gzhandler, but to no avail, also setting envvars force-gzip = 1, and no-gzip = 0.

Any ideas would be really appreciated.

Thanks,

Tom.