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What is a good strategy for automatically applying and/or updating cache buster variables on my javascript and stylesheet references in an ASP.Net website?
E.g. Transforming
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/myScript.js" />
to
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/myScript.js?rev=12345" />
UPDATE: Continuous Integration is not required.
I am using continuous integration (Jenkins to be specific), so it would be great if the method for updating the variables was based on the build number for instance.
While I can live with applying the original variables manually in the source code and just updating them via the strategy, it would be a nice addition if the strategy could also apply the original variable if it did not already exist (say to legacy code).
Off the top of my head, I can imagine using a Powershell script that scans through all *.aspx and *.ascx files and uses a regular expression to find the appropriate references and update them. But you know what they say about using regular expressions... then I have two problems :)
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Cache busting is a way to prevent browsers from caching your ad content. Cache busting adds a random string to your ad tag each time the tag fires — typically a random number. Because the tag has a different number each time, the browser sends a new request each time.
Cache busting means making sure the users browser loads the newest version of our app, if it has been updated, instead of using a cached version. A naive webpack setup would just use a single output file with a fixed name. const path = require('path'); const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin'); module.
A cache-buster is a small URL-parameter that should always be added to the tracking pixel URL. If the cache-buster is not added, the browser will re-use previously recognized elements of a website again and again on almost every page. This is a problem for ads, banners and tracking pixels.
The answer to cache buster variables in ASP.Net is to use one of the various CSS/JS minification libraries.
I was thinking that the cache buster variables would need to be updated with each deployment to our servers, but the minification libraries apply a hash tag based on the contents of the individual CSS/JS files.
Since I am developing a .Net 3.5 website my choices were a little restricted. I ended up using SquishIt (available as a NuGet package) and it was SO easy to integrate.
<link href="/<my_css_path>/<css_file_1>.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/<my_css_path>/<css_file_2>.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/<my_css_path>/<css_file_3>.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
became
<%= Bundle.Css()
.Add("~/<my_css_path>")
.Render("~/<my_css_path>/combined_#.css") %>
and that is basically it! Similar idea with the javascript. As long as debug="true" in your web.config for local development and debug="false" for your staging/production environments, SquishIt will leave your CSS/JS unseparated and unminified for local development and then combine, minify and hash (for cache busting) for your other environments.
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