Cache manifest offline app not refreshing javascript files in Chrome

Question

I am working on an offline web app using a cache manifest file. I am having trouble refreshing my javascript files. If I change a .js file (which is listed in the manifest file) and I then change the manifest file version no. and save it, then the changed .js file does not get reloaded on the client. What do I have to do to get .js files to refresh?

Thanks

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 04 '14 at 09:06

That's because the webserver tells the browser cache static files for a few hours. So the browser doesn't know the manifest file is changed. You can clear all the application data 'or' config the web server the manifest is not cacheable...

Read http://diveintohtml5.info/offline.html for more info

If you want to clear your app cache on chrome use chrome://appcache-internals/ and by hand you have to search in C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 21 '12 at 15:12

I had assumed that you if you use a cache manifest and then refresh the manifest, that the browser would request all of the files again. However, I have found that I needed to explicitly set headers in all of the files in the manifest to tell the browser not to cache the files. I believe that once the manifest tells the browser to request the file again, the browser treats it like any other non-manifest cached file. Maybe this is an error with Chrome, but I feel like I saw this in another WebKit browser.

Regardless, set the headers for the files in the manifest to never be cached and they should reload when you update the manifest. If these files are used outside of a manifest page, you may need to actually cache the files depending on your needs.

I experienced the same behavior. In my experiments, I noticed that in this scenario, using Rack and WEBrick, Chrome 27 reloads correctly the html files (regardless of the caching headers) but requires to disable caching for JavaScript files. On the contrary, Firefox 21 correctly reloads JavaScript files even with default caching. For Chrome you can find a working `config.ru` at https://github.com/edymtt/cvsandbox/blob/master/config.ru — edymtt, Jun 17 '13 at 18:22

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 18 '15 at 08:37

3

Type chrome://appcache-internals in your address bar then click ENTER

A list of cached manifests will appear then just delete the one you want and everything will be refreshed when you load your page again.

Hope this helps :)

answered Feb 18 '15 at 08:37

Dumisani

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score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

I had the same problem until I came across this priceless warning on the Mozilla Developer site

Important: Do not specify the manifest itself in the cache manifest file, otherwise it will be nearly impossible to inform the browser a new manifest is available.

woops. my bad.

However, every time I change something in the code, I need to change something in the manifest, and then reload twice, which is an unrelated issue.

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

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In my case, i has to disable the traditional browser cache using meta tags. See this SO question how to that

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

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answered Apr 13 '16 at 00:13

Garry

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Cache manifest offline app not refreshing javascript files in Chrome

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