Re: FRAMES and CGI-scripts

On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis wrote:

> Since I started using frames I seem to have a problem with "cache" memory.
> 
> When I activate a cgi-script from a form or a "<A HREF" link, I get no 
> new results, only the old results come up

In CGI you can generate explicit HTTP headers to control cacheing,
e.g. "Expires", "Cache-control", "Pragma", "Last-Modified". See the
HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1 spec.s for details

IMO one should try to generate as many headers as possible, i.e. valid 
Content-Length, Last-Modified, Expires with correct values, and if
feasible handle If-Modified-Since requests.

Setting "Pragma: no-cache" may (should?) result in the document not being
cached. Setting "Expires: 0" will probably result in the document being
cached, but an If-Modified-Since request being sent every time. Setting
a valid GMT expiration time will result in the cached copy being used
(depending on browser preferences) until the expiry date is passed, when 
an If-Modified-Since request will be sent (based on the Last-Modified
date).

If desperate, adding a junk query to the URL will guarantee a new
document. (One should add Expires: 0 to prevent hierarchical cache wasting
resources saving junk URLs)

Andrew Daviel
TRIUMF & Vancouver Webpages
http://vancouver-webpages.com/CacheNow/ - campaign for proxy cache

Received on Friday, 6 March 1998 16:51:34 UTC