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orokusaki
Asked: 2012-12-23 13:55:40 +0800 CST

How can I get Nginx to tell Firefox to cache my content?

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The following headers (from a static media response) don't lead to caching in Firefox. In Chrome they do.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:20:39 GMT
Content-Type: application/x-javascript; charset=utf-8
Last-Modified: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 19:28:54 GMT
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: public, max-age=86400
Content-Encoding: gzip

My Nginx server for static content looks like this:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name static.example.com;

    # Logs
    access_log /var/log/nginx/static.example.com.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/static.example.com.error.log;

    # Root
    location / {
        alias /var/www/app/deps/current/repo/src/example/static/;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=86400";
    }
}

I've also tried using expires 24h;, in place of add_header ..., without luck.

I've found numerous, similar complaints on the Internet, but no solutions, nor any ideas of why this is, other than one person's mention of how Firefox purposely strays from the specification for handling HTTP 1.1 Cache-Control headers.

Is there any way to get Firefox to cache my static media, via a header or multiple headers? I don't want 75% of my server's static media requests to come from 20% of my users, just because Firefox is busted.

Note, I'm using Firefox 17.0.1 with default settings, but with Firebug installed and open to the Net tab.

Update:

Using, instead:

expires 1d;
add_header Cache-Control public;

Causes the headers to include:

Expires: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:54:20 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=604800, public

This also doesn't cause Firefox to cache the content.

nginx

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    How do you determine that Firefox is not caching your files?

    When a Last-Modified header is present in a reply, the browser is supposed to be making all subsequent requests for the same URL with a If-Modified-Since header, and then the response from a server may only contain a header (with no body) if the file has not been modified since.

    IIRC, Gecko also looks at how old the Last-Modified date is. If it's relatively recent, then it only makes sense that the content changes all the time, and has to be re-requested (with a If-Modified-Since or the like) quite often. On the other hand, if the date is several weeks, months or years old, then the content is likely to be cached for an extended period of time.

    Another thing to look at: do you actually have the correct timezone and time on your Firefox machine?

    • 1 
  2. server {
    expires    1d;
    add_header Cache-Control public;
    listen 80;
    ....
}

    Try it this way please like described in nginx docs

    So i was courious and tried caching myself With config below. What i have changed is that i started a app on localhost:4567. Whereas in external website a proxypass is configured. More or less like most caching examples i could find. 

    user nginx; worker_processes 2;
error_log /var/log/nginxtesterror.log; pid /run/nginx.pid;
events { worker_connections 1024; }
http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type
    application/octet-stream;
    log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local]
                      "$request" ' '$status $body_bytes_sent
                      "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent"
                      "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
    sendfile on; #tcp_nopush on; keepalive_timeout 65;
    proxy_cache_path
    /var/www/app/deps/current/repo/src/example/static/ levels=1:1:2
    keys_zone=one:200m max_size=1000m loader_files=2000 inactive=60m;
    proxy_temp_path /var/www/app/deps/current/repo/src/example/tmp;
    proxy_cache_valid 1d;
    gzip on; gzip_disable msie6; gzip_static on; gzip_comp_level 4;
    gzip_proxied any; gzip_types text/plain text/css
    application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml
    application/xml+rss text/javascript;
    server { listen 80; server_name static.example.com;
        proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP
        $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For
        $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass_header Set-Cookie ;
        location ~*
                .(?:ico|css|js|gif|jpe?g|png|pdf|zip|tar|t?gz|mp3|wav|swf)$
                { expires max; add_header Pragma public; add_header
                Cache-Control public; }

        location / { proxy_pass http://localhost:4567; proxy_cache_key
            $cache_key; proxy_cache one; add_header Cache-Control
            public; proxy_cache_valid 1d; proxy_cache_use_stale error
            timeout invalid_header http_500 http_502 http_504
            http_404; }
    }
    server {
        root /var/www/app/deps/current/repo/src/example/static/;
        listen 127.0.0.1:4567; set $cache_key
        $scheme$host$uri$is_args$args;

        # Logs access_log
        /var/log/nginx/static.example.com.access.log; error_log
        /var/log/nginx/static.example.com.error.log;

        # Root 
        location / {
            alias /var/www/app/deps/current/repo/src/example/static/; 
            } 
       }
}
    • 0