Friday, December 29, 2006

Caching headers in HTTP

All dynamic applications need to prevent caching so that the request actually reaches the server each time.
In this post, I found over the internet, a good explanation of the different cache headers was given. Snippet from the post:

First of all you have to remember that these directives are used by all downstream caches (proxy servers and the browser) and therefore what might work in one situation (say, a direct connection between web server and client) may not work if there is a caching proxy server in between if the cache control headers are not thought through carefully.

Taking the directives in turn:

response.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache");
This is the only cache control directive for HTTP 1.0, so should feature in addition to any HTTP 1.1 cache control headers you include.

response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache"); // HTTP 1.1
This directive does NOT prevent caching despite its name. It allows caching of the page, but specifies that the cache must ask the originating web server if the page is up-to-date before serving the cached version. So the cached page can still be served up i- f the originating web server says so. Applies to all caches.

response.setDateHeader ("Expires", 0); // HTTP 1.1
This tells the browser that the page has expired and must be treated as stale. Should be good news as long as the caches obey.

response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "private"); // HTTP 1.1
This specifies that the page contains information intended for a single user only and must not be cached by a shared cache (e.g. a proxy server).

response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-store"); // HTTP 1.1
This specifies that a cache must NOT store any part of the response or the request that elicited it. Adding these two headers should prevent the caching of pages anywhere between the web server and browser, as well as in the browser itself. The meaning of each directive is very specific and so a given combination of directives has a different effect in any one environment.

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