HTTP Developer’s Handbook

Controlling Caching with HTTP

One of the most important areas of performance a Web developer should focus on is controlling the caching behavior with HTTP. It is very rare that the same caching rules will be appropriate for all pages within a Web application. Unfortunately, this approach is prevalent. A more proper use of HTTP headers is all that you need to benefit from the opportunity you are given by the HTTP protocol to control the caching behavior in both proxies as well as Web clients.

Cache-Control General Header

Of the HTTP headers defined in HTTP/1.1, one of the ones deserving attention is Cache-Control. Although Cache-Control is defined in Chapter 7, “General Headers,” I will explain it again here.

Note

Because most Web development ...