Updates the Default Root Object of a CloudFront distribution

Purpose

Content distribution networks like CloudFront let you cache static assets in Edge Locations for extended periods of time. A problem occurs however when you go to release a new version of your website, you will have to explictly tell CloudFront to expire each file or you will have to wait for the TTL to expire. In the case of CloudFront, you will need to invalidate items or wait for the cache TTL to expire before vistors of your website will see the vew version.

A solution to this problem is adding a revisioned suffix to the filename for each static asset. The gulp plugin gulp-rev-all can assist in this process. eg. unicorn.css => unicorn-098f6bcd.css You can then use gulp-s3 to upload the revisioned files to a S3 bucket which CloudFront points to.

Finally gulp-cloudfront comes in during the final step, to update a CloudFront distributions' Default Root Object to the latest revisioned index.html. Updating the Default Root Object only takes 5-10 minutes and all new visitors to your website will no longer see the old cached content. A much better solution than waiting for cached items to expire or invalidating individual files which costs $$.

You can in essence host multiple versions of your website under the same static host and if you need to revert to an older version you need only change the index.html file.

Under the Hood

This plugin will identify the index.html file based on the default or configured pattern. Once identified it will update the CloudFront distribution to the new index file.

Install

Install with npm

npm install --save-dev @gdn/gulp-cloudfront

Example

var gulp = require('gulp');
var revall = require('gulp-rev-all');
var awspublish = require('gulp-awspublish');
var cloudfront = require("@gdn/gulp-cloudfront");

var aws = {
    "key": "AKIAI3Z7CUAFHG53DMJA",
    "secret": "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",
    "bucket": "bucket-name",
    "region": "us-standard",
    "distributionId": "E1SYAKGEMSK3OD"
};

var publisher = awspublish.create(aws);
var headers = {'Cache-Control': 'max-age=315360000, no-transform, public'};

gulp.task('default', function () {
    gulp.src('dist/**')
        .pipe(revall())
        .pipe(awspublish.gzip())
        .pipe(publisher.publish(headers))
        .pipe(publisher.cache())
        .pipe(awspublish.reporter())
        .pipe(cloudfront(aws));
});

• See gulp-awspublish, gulp-rev-all

API

options.patternIndex

Type: Regular Expression Default: /^\/index\.[a-f0-9]{8}\.html(\.gz)*$/gi

Specify the pattern used to match the default root object

var aws = {
    ..,
    "patternIndex": /^\/root\-[a-f0-9]{4}\.html(\.gz)*$/gi
};

License

MIT © Joshua Bellamy-Henn