Client cache-control The basic aspects of caching are pretty simple. It stores the copy of the loaded page for a specific amount of time (during which it’s considered adequate) allowing user to use it instead of reloading this page from the server. Most of the web clients (browsers) can cache received server responses and store the content on the user’s hard disk drive for further reuse. To provide efficient caching one should take into consideration two main principles: adequacy and validation. Adequacy means that the cached objects must be up-to-date, i.e. the same as on the server. Validation is an operation to check whether stored data still corresponds to that on the web server. If the data is fresh, the local resource is used, otherwise the data needs to be reloaded from the server. But by default caching does not provide desired results. This can be easily explained:
The goal of client caching is to set some expiration rules for every type of content, so client does not need to reload all site content every time and just uses files from the cache before it expires. Helicon Jet provides you with a separate feature to gracefully control client cache by setting appropriate HTTP server headers. These settings have to be specified manually, but you won’t regret the results! Helicon Jet allows you to specify expiration time and scope of caching for certain directories and files or content types separately, thus providing subtle adjustment of client cache and therefore increasing server performance. For implementation instructions and other details, please see Cache control chapter of the current manual. |