grunt-cache-bust

Bust static assets from the cache using content hashing

• Getting Started
• Introduction
• How it works
• Options
• Usage Examples
• CDNs
• Change Log

PLEASE READ

This plugin recently upgraded to v1.0.0!! There was a big change in the way the plugin works. You can read me about the changes in issue #147.

Getting Started

If you haven't used grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide.

From the same directory as your project's Gruntfile and package.json, install this plugin with the following command:

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

Once the plugin has been installed, enabled it inside your Gruntfile.

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

The "cacheBust" task

Use the cacheBust task for cache busting static files in your application. This allows the assets to have a large expiry time in the browsers cache and will only be forced to use an updated file when the contents of it changes. This is a good practice.

Tell the cacheBust task where your static assets are and the files that reference them and let it work it's magic.

Supported file types

All of them!!

How it works

In your project's Gruntfile, add a new task called cacheBust.

This is the most basic configuration you can have:

cacheBust: {
    taskName: {
        options: {
            assets: ['assets/**']
        },
        src: ['index.html']
    }
}

These are the two mandatory fields you need to supply:

The assets option that is passed to the plugin tells it what types of files you want to hash, i.e. css and js files. You must also provide the location for these files. In the example above, they live in the assets folder.

The src part of the configuration you should have seen before as it's used by pretty much every Grunt plugin. We use this to tell the plugin which files contain references to assets we're going to be adding a hash to. You can use the expand configuration option here as well

To summarise, the above configuration will hash all the files in the assets directory and replace any references to those files in the index.html file.

Options

Summary

// Here is a short summary of the options and some of their 
defaults. Extra details are below.
{
    algorithm: 'md5',                             // Algorithm used for hashing files
    assets: ['css/*', 'js/*']                     // File patterns for the assets you wish to hash
    baseDir: './',                                // The base directory for all assets
    createCopies: true,                           // Create hashed copies of files
    deleteOriginals: false,                       // Delete the original file after hashing
    encoding: 'utf8',                             // The encoding used when reading/writing files
    hash: '9ef00db36970718e',                     // A user defined hash for every file. Not recommended.
    jsonOutput: false,                            // Output the original => new URLs to a JSON file
    jsonOutputFilename: 'grunt-cache-bust.json',  // The file path and name of the exported JSON. Is relative to baseDir
    length: 16,                                   // The length of the hash value
    separator: '.',                               // The separator between the original file name and hash
    queryString: false                            // Use a query string for cache busting instead of rewriting files
    outputDir: ''                                 // Directory where all hashed assets will be copied. Is relative to baseDir
    clearOutputDir: false,                        // Clear output directory. If outputDir was not set clear will not work
    urlPrefixes: ['http://owncdn.test.com/path']  // Array of Url + Path of own CDNs where hashed files are uploaded to. 
}

options.algorithm

Type: String
Default value: 'md5'

algorithm is dependent on the available algorithms supported by the version of OpenSSL on the platform. Examples are 'sha1', 'md5', 'sha256', 'sha512'

options.assets

Type: Array

assets contains the file patterns for where all your assets live. This should point towards all the assets you wish to have busted. It uses the same glob pattern for matching files as Grunt.

options.baseDir

Type: String
Default value: false

When set, cachebust will try to find the assets using the baseDir as base path.

assets: {
    options: {
        baseDir: 'public/',
    },
    files: [{   
        expand: true,
        cwd: 'public/',
        src: ['modules/**/*.html']
    }]
}   

options.urlPrefixes

Type: Array of Strings
Default value: ``

When set, cachebust will try to find the assets with this prefixes, useful for:

• Asset files uploaded to a separate cdn
• Asset files which are served out of a deeper path within your deployment

For example:

cacheBust: {
  options: {
    urlPrefixes: ['/dashboard/app/app.min.js']
  }
}

will convert:

<script src="/dashboard/app/app.min.js"></script>   

into

<script src="/dashboard/app/app.min.bce0b589338ff97a.js"></script>   

options.createCopies

Type: Boolean
Default value: true

When set to false, cachebust will not create hashed copies of the files. Useful if you use server rewrites to serve your files.

options.deleteOriginals

Type: Boolean
Default value: false

When set, cachebust will delete the original versions of the files that have been hashed. For example, style.css will be deleted after being copied to style.dcf1d324cb50a1f9.css.

options.encoding

Type: String
Default value: 'utf8'

The encoding of the file contents.

options.hash

Type: String

A user defined value to be used as the hash value for all files. For a more beneficial caching strategy, it's advised not to supply a hash value for all files.

options.jsonOutput

Type: Boolean
Default value: false

When set as true, cachbust will create a json file with an object inside that contains key value pairs of the original file name, and the renamed md5 hash name for each file.

Output format looks like this:

{
  '/scripts/app.js' : '/scripts/app.23e6f7ac5623e96f.js',
  '/scripts/vendor.js': '/scripts/vendor.h421fwaj124bfaf5.js'
}

options.jsonOutputFilename

Type: String
Default value: grunt-cache-bust.json

The file path and name of the exported JSON. It is exported relative to baseDir.

options.length

Type: Number
Default value: 16

The number of characters of the file content hash to prefix the file name with.

options.separator

Type: String
Default value: .

The separator between the original file name and hash.

options.queryString

Type: Boolean
Default value: false

Use a query string for cache busting instead of rewriting files.

Usage Examples

The most basic setup

cacheBust: {
    taskName: {
        options: {
            assets: ['assets/**']
        },
        src: ['index.html']
    }
}

Bust using a query string instead of rewriting files

cacheBust: {
    taskName: {
        options: {
            assets: ['assets/**'],
            queryString: true
        },
        src: ['index.html']
    }
}

Bust all assets and update references in all templates and assets

cacheBust: {
    options: {
        assets: ['assets/**/*'],
        baseDir: './public/'
    },
    taskName: {
        files: [{   
            expand: true,
            cwd: 'public/',
            src: ['templates/**/*.html', 'assets/**/*']
        }]
    }
}

Inherited options for multiple tasks

cacheBust: {
    options: {
        assets: ['assets/**'],
        baseDir: './public/'
    },
    staging: {
        options: {
            jsonOutput: true
        },
        src: ['index.html']
    },
    production: {
        options: {
            jsonOutput: false
        },
        src: ['index.html']
    }
}

License

MIT © Ben Holland