doc/admin-guide/plugins/regex_revalidate.en.rst

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.. include:: ../../common.defs

.. _admin-plugins-regex-revalidate:

Regex Revalidate Plugin
***********************

This plugin allows for the creation of rules which match regular expressions
against mapped URLs to determine if and when a cache object revalidation should
be forced.

Purpose
=======

This plugin's intended use is the selective forcing of revalidations on cache
objects which are not yet marked as stale in |TS| but which may have been
updated at the origin - without needing to alter cache control headers,
preemptively purge the object from the cache manually, or adjust the global
cache revalidation settings (such as fuzz times) used by other plugins.

Forced cache revalidations may be as specifically or loosely targeted as a
regular expression against your origin URLs permits. Thus, individual cache
objects may have rules created for them, or entire path prefixes, or even any
cache objects with a particular file extension.

Revalidate count  stats for MISS and STALE are recorded under plugins

Installation
============

To make this plugin available, you must enable experimental plugins when
building |TS| by passing the ``-DBUILD_EXPERIMENTAL_PLUGINS=ON`` to the ``cmake`` command
when building.

Configuration
=============

This plugin is enabled via the :file:`plugin.config` configuration file, with
two required arguments: the path to a rules file, and the path to a log file::

    regex_revalidate.so -c <path to rules> -l <path to log>

The rule configuration file format is described below in `Revalidation Rules`_.

By default The plugin regularly (every 60 seconds) checks its rules configuration
file for changes and it will also check for changes when ``traffic_ctl config reload``
is run. If the file has been modified since its last scan, the contents
are read and the in-memory rules list is updated. Thus, new rules may be added and
existing ones modified without requiring a service restart.

The configuration parameter `--disable-timed-updates` or `-d` may be used to configure
the plugin to disable timed config file change checks.  With timed checks disabled,
config file changes are checked are only when ``traffic_ctl config reload`` is run.::

    regex_revalidate.so -d -c <path to rules> -l <path to log>

The configuration parameter `--state-file` or `-f` may be used to configure
the plugin to maintain a state file with the last loaded configuration.
Normally when ATS restarts the epoch times of all rules are reset to
the first config file load time which will cause all matching assets to
issue new IMS requests to their parents for matching rules.

This option allows the revalidate rule "epoch" times to be retained between ATS
restarts.  This state file by default is placed in var/trafficserver/<filename>
but an absolute path may be specified as well. Syntax is as follows::

    regex_revalidate.so -d -c <path to rules> -f <path to state file>

The configuration parameter `--match-header` or `-m` may be used to
populate a supplied client request header name with a base64 encoded
version of the matched revalidation rule.  This can be useful for checking
if the plugin has modified cache status. Syntax is a follows::

    regex_revalidate.so -c <path to rules> -m <header name>

Revalidation Rules
==================

Inside your revalidation rules configuration, each rule line is defined as a
regular expression followed by an integer which expresses the epoch time at
which the rule will expire::

    <regular expression> <rule expiry, as seconds since epoch> [type MISS or default STALE]

Blank lines and lines beginning with a ``#`` character are ignored.

Matching Expression
-------------------

PCRE style regular expressions are supported and should be used to match
against the complete remapped URL of cache objects (not the original
client-side URL), including protocol scheme and origin server domain.

Rule Expiration
---------------

Every rule must have an expiration associated with it. The rule expiration is
expressed as an integer of seconds since epoch (equivalent to the return value
of :manpage:`time(2)`), after which the forced revalidation will no longer
occur.

Type
----

By default any matching asset will have its cache lookup status changed
from HIT_FRESH to HIT_STALE.  By adding an extra keyword MISS at the end
of a line the asset will be marked MISS instead, forcing a refetch from
the parent. *Use with care* as this will increase bandwidth to the parent.
During configuration reload, any rule which changes it type will be
reloaded and treated as a new rule.

NOTE: MISS Should *only* be used when the parent is known to be an origin.
If the parent is another caching CDN it is likely that the refetch object
will have the identical DATE header as the object currently in cache.
In this case matching assets will effectively become no-cache assets
until the refetch rule expires.

Caveats
=======

Matches Only Post-Remapping
---------------------------

The regular expressions in revalidation rules see only the final, remapped URL
in a transaction. As such, they cannot be used to distinguish between two
client-facing URLs which are mapped to the same origin object. This is due to
the fact that the plugin uses :cpp:enumerator:`TS_HTTP_CACHE_LOOKUP_COMPLETE_HOOK`.

Removing Rules
--------------

While new rules are added dynamically (the configuration file is checked every
60 seconds for changes), rule lines removed from the configuration file do not
currently lead to that rule being removed from the running plugin. In these
cases, if the rule must be taken out of service, a service restart may be
necessary.

State File
----------

The state file is not meant to be edited but is of the format::

<regular expression> <rule epoch> <rule expiry> <type>


Examples
========

The following rule would cause the cache object whose origin server is
``origin.tld`` and whose path is ``/images/foo.jpg`` to be revalidated by force
in |TS| until 6:47:27 AM on Saturday, November 14th, 2015 (UTC)::

    http://origin\.tld/images/foo\.jpg 1447483647

Note the escaping of the ``.`` metacharacter in the rule's regular expression.

Alternatively the following rule would case a refetch from the parent::

    http://origin\.tld/images/foo\.jpg 1447483647 MISS