[development] preventing browser cache

[jeff at ayendesigns.com]

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-----Original Message-----
From: Blake Senftner <bsenftner at earthlink.net>
Sender: development-bounces at drupal.org
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 14:17:33 
To: <development at drupal.org>
Reply-To: development at drupal.org
Subject: Re: [development] preventing browser cache

Thanks for the tip Mike. These are files on disk. 

Sincerely,
-Blake
bsenftner at earthlink.net
www.BlakeSenftner.com
www.MissingUbercartManual.com

On Dec 9, 2010, at 1:09 PM, Michael Prasuhn wrote:

> That is only needed with actual files on disk, if your XML is returned from a Drupal menu callback, it's cache-expire headers should be set far in the past to prevent caching. Check this out with curl -v to see what's going on.
> 
> -Mike
>__________________
> Michael Prasuhn
> 503.512.0822 office
> mike at mikeyp.net
> http://mikeyp.net
> 
> On Dec 9, 2010, at 1:05 PM, Blake Senftner wrote:
> 
>> I'm finding that I need to implement a browser cache prevention scheme for dynamic content I am generating.
>> 
>> My use case: user supplied info gets converted into XML and loaded by a java applet on the same page.
>> 
>> I'm seeing the java applet load cached versions of the data, and I want to prevent this. 
>> 
>> I don't have the ability to modify the java applet, and it always loads it's XML from the same filename. 
>> 
>> I'm thinking about using the same technique that I see Drupal use for javascript files, where the src attribute's file url has a fake query string at the end, something like "/misc/drupal.js?5" , where the "?5" is the fake query string.
>> 
>> It's my understanding that this prevents browser caching, and ultimately does not trigger a query - so it's a great method for cache prevention of dynamic content. 
>> 
>> Is my understanding correct? I've not done this before. Is it simply a matter of placing a single random character after the question mark? 
>> To anyone that has implemented a scheme such as this: any pitfalls I should be aware? 
>> 
>> Sincerely,
>> -Blake
>> bsenftner at earthlink.net
>> www.BlakeSenftner.com
>> www.MissingUbercartManual.com
>> 
>