How do I empty Drupal Cache (without Devel)

Question

How do I empty the Drupal caches:

• without the Devel module
• without running some PHP Statement in a new node etc.
• without going into the database itself

Effectively, how do you instruct an end user to clear his caches?

Answer 1

When you are logged as an admin (obviously, not every user of the site has to power to clear the cache), there should be a page in "Administer > Site Configuration > Performance".

And, at the bottom of the page, there should be a button (something like "Clear cached data") to clear the cache

As far as I remember, there's no need for Devel to do that, and you really don't need to go to the database, nor run some home-made PHP code.

As a reference, you can take a look at How to Clear Drupal Server-side cache

Answer 2

You can also use the Drush module, which allows you to use the command line to execute popular Drupal commands, like "drush cron" or "drush cache clear".

Answer 3

If you want to clear the cache from a module, you can use the following code.

drupal_flush_all_caches();

Answer 4

I have the easiest solution for that. Install admin_menu module (actually not only for this purpose, once you have installed this module, you wont regret it for sure, link: http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu). Ok, then on a newly appeared top dropdown menu hover your favicon and dropdown menu will appear, and you will see: Flush all caches menu. One click - one flush. Moreover you can flush all caches together or select what to flush: Pages, menu, themes etc. Try and you will never go back )

Answer 5

It would be awesome if you could just GET the behavior by hitting:
http://drupal.local./admin/settings/performance?op=Clear%20cached%20data
but you can't.
However I do want to note the URL for short-cutting through the admin menu (use the latter part):
http://drupal.local. /admin/settings/performance

Answer 6

I found the following at: http://www.drupalgardens.com/content/clear-all-caches-not-working

There's another layer of caching around the site which "clear all caches" does not affect, you're right. That's the layer that stores the content for anonymous users.

If you want to bypass the cache for testing purposes, you can add a junk query string to the end of your site path. For example, if you wanted to bypass the cache on example.drupalgardens.com/foo you could visit example.drupalgardens.com/foo?bar=baz or any other random text set up like ?xxxxx=xxxxx.

This helped me, because I have had issues where clearing the cache under Configuration > Performance didn't seem to help.

Answer 7

The above code is for Drupal 6.

For Drupal 7 the flush-cache module would be as follows:

<?php 
/**
 * Implementation of hook_menu()
 */
function flush_cache_menu() {
  $items = array();

  $items['flush-cache'] = array(
  'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
  'title' => t('Flush the cache'),
  'description' => 'Flush all website caches to make sure it updates to relect '.
    'your recent changes.',
  'page callback' => 'flush_cache_custom_callback',
  'access callback' => user_access('flush cache'),
  );

  return $items;
}

/**
 * Implementation of hook_permission()
 */
function flush_cache_permission() {
  return array(
    'administer my module' => array(
      'title' => t('flush cache module'),
      'description' => t('Content admin flush cache.'),
    ),
  );
}

/**
 * Function that flushes the cache
 */
function flush_cache_custom_callback() {
  drupal_flush_all_caches();
  return 'Caches were flushed.';
}

Note: that you then flush it by going to:

sitename.com/flush-cache

Make sure you give them permission on the permission page. Clear cache once the "normal" way if the permission doesn't appear after turning the module on.

This is preferable when you don't want your client to get access to the admin menu but you still want them to be able to flush the cache.

Answer 8

On-demand clearing can be done in Administer > Site Configuration > Performance.

You should setup the cron job to run every hour (or whatever interval to your liking).

When cron is run on Drupal, all caches are cleared and rebuilt without the need for a human to manually do it.

If this question pertains to theming, you should disable the caching mechanisms (css/js aggregation) and you won't have to clear the cache data when you make changes.

Answer 9

HERE YOU GO:

I had to de-install the "devel" module (it was incompatible with Special Menu Items, which I needed worse), so I made my own.

Anywhere you see MODULENAME replace it with the name of your module.

STEP 1: Add to any module (preferably one of your custom modules) in the HOOK_MENU, before the "return $items" line:

// short cut for flushing the caches:
$items['flush-cache'] = array(
  'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
  'title' => t('Flush the cache'),
  'description' => 'MODULENAME Custom Cache Flush',
  'page callback' => 'MODULENAME_flush_cache',
  'access callback' => TRUE,
);

STEP 2: Now, in the same module file, where it's not "inside" any other function, add:

/**  Page callback  **/
function MODULENAME_flush_cache() {
  drupal_flush_all_caches();
  return 'Caches were flushed.';
}

Now, you can just go to the URL "/flush-cache" on your site to flush the cache. (After you flush the cache one last time the old way.)

STEP 3: If you want it REALLY convenient, add the following to your page.tpl.php file. You can put it pretty much anywhere between <body> and </body>. NOTE: $my_is_test is a variable I use that's TRUE on my test system, and FALSE in production. If you don't have something like that, replace it with TRUE or FALSE to turn it on or off:

<?php if ($my_is_test): ?>
<a style="text-align:left; position:absolute; right:2px; top:20px;" href="<?=$base_path?>flush-cache" onclick="this.innerHTML = '<b><blink><big>Wait...</big></blink></b>';">flush</a>
<? endif; ?>

And voila! You have a "flush" link at the top-right corner of every page you can click on. Feel free to change the "right" and "top" amounts (or change "right" to "left" or "top" to "bottom" to put it wherever you like it. This link positioning only works on modern browsers, but it's only for you, so it shouldn't be a problem, right?

Answer 10

In Drupal 8, the admin menu module isn't quite ready for use yet. And it will probably get replaced with Drupal "Toolbar". So right now there's no easy way to clear cache, without actually going to:

admin/config/development/performance

The only alternative is to add a menu item in the existing toolbar. This can be done by using this module, but as you can see, it still needs a bit of work. I got it working, but had to make a few tweaks.

Answer 11

The following module creates a menu item that is accessible only to users with the permission "flush cache", which this module makes available on the regular user permissions page.

/**
 * Implementation of hook_menu()
 */
function flush_cache_menu() {
  $items = array();

  $items['flush-cache'] = array(
  'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
  'title' => t('Flush the cache'),
  'description' => 'Flush all website caches to make sure it updates to relect '.
    'your recent changes.',
  'page callback' => 'flush_cache_custom_callback',
  'access callback' => user_access('flush cache'),
  );

  return $items;
}

/**
 * Implementation of hook_perm()
 */
function flush_cache_perm() {
  return array('flush cache');
}

/**
 * Function that flushes the cache
 */
function flush_cache_custom_callback() {
  drupal_flush_all_caches();
  return 'Caches were flushed.';
}

Answer 12

use drush and this command: drush cc all

If you're using Boost to cache you need to be more specific:

drush @alias_name cc all