HTTP response freshness testing
This is a Node.js module available through the npm registry. Installation is done using the npm install
command:
$ npm install fresh
var fresh = require('fresh')
Check freshness of the response using request and response headers.
When the response is still “fresh” in the client's cache true
is returned, otherwise false
is returned to indicate that the client cache is now stale and the full response should be sent.
When a client sends the Cache-Control: no-cache
request header to indicate an end-to-end reload request, this module will return false
to make handling these requests transparent.
This module is designed to only follow the HTTP specifications, not to work-around all kinda of client bugs (especially since this module typically does not recieve enough information to understand what the client actually is).
There is a known issue that in certain versions of Safari, Safari will incorrectly make a request that allows this module to validate freshness of the resource even when Safari does not have a representation of the resource in the cache. The module jumanji can be used in an Express application to work-around this issue and also provides links to further reading on this Safari bug.
var reqHeaders = { 'if-none-match': '"foo"' } var resHeaders = { 'etag': '"bar"' } fresh(reqHeaders, resHeaders) // => false var reqHeaders = { 'if-none-match': '"foo"' } var resHeaders = { 'etag': '"foo"' } fresh(reqHeaders, resHeaders) // => true
var fresh = require('fresh') var http = require('http') var server = http.createServer(function (req, res) { // perform server logic // ... including adding ETag / Last-Modified response headers if (isFresh(req, res)) { // client has a fresh copy of resource res.statusCode = 304 res.end() return } // send the resource res.statusCode = 200 res.end('hello, world!') }) function isFresh (req, res) { return fresh(req.headers, { 'etag': res.getHeader('ETag'), 'last-modified': res.getHeader('Last-Modified') }) } server.listen(3000)