grunt-bust-cache-variable

Bust static assets from the cache using date.now() along with the ability to target specific files.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.2

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-bust-cache-variable --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-bust-cache-variable');

If the plugin has been installed correctly, running grunt --help at the command line should list the newly-installed plugin's task or tasks. In addition, the plugin should be listed in package.json as a devDependency, which ensures that it will be installed whenever the npm install command is run.

The "bustCacheVariable" task

Use the bustMyCache task for cache busting static files in your application. This allows them to be cached forever by the browser, just point the task towards any file that contains references to static assets.

_Currently supported static assets: CSS & JavaScript.

Note: Remote URLs for CSS and JavaScript are ignored by bustMyCache. This assumes that remote URLs for these assets will be CDN hosted content, typically for well known libraries like jQuery or Bootstrap. These URLs typically include a version identifier in the URL to deal with browser caching, and it is in the best interest of your app to use the standard URL as-is to ensure browser cache hits for popular libraries. For example, all of below URLs will be ignored:

<link href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/twitter-bootstrap/2.3.2/css/bootstrap-combined.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/assets/css/bootstrap.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.6/angular.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/qunit/qunit-1.12.0.js"></script>

Overview

In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named bustCacheVariable to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().

bustCacheVariable: {
  default: { 
    options: {
      filter: 'base'
    },
    files: {
        'src/pageHeader.jsp':'dist/pageHeader.jsp'
    }
  }
}

Options

options.filter

Type: String Default value: false

Allow you to pass a path to a specific variable to be cache busted, useful if you don't want to blow away the cache on all of your files.

options.baseDir

Type: String Default value: ./

If your assets are located in a different directory, make sure you set this to the correct base path.

Usage Examples

Basic Asset Cache Busting

grunt.initConfig({
  bustCacheVariable: {
    default: { 
      files: {
          'src/pageHeader.jsp':'dist/pageHeader.jsp'
      }
    }
  }
})

Basic Asset Cache Busting with different configs

grunt.initConfig({
  bustCacheVariable: {
    global_css: { 
      options: {
        filter: 'global_css'
      },
      files: {
      'src/pageHeader.jsp':'dist/pageHeader.jsp'
      }
    },
    product_css: { 
      options: {
        filter: 'product_css'
      },
      files: {
      'src/pageHeader.jsp':'dist/pageHeader.jsp'
      }
    }
  },
})

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.