Force refresh of modified JS & CSS file in cakephp

Question

I've only read about two options for cakephp caching files:

• Rather you cache them all
• Or you don't cache any.

I want something in between. Something equivalent as what we've all been doing in any other site, using a version parameter:

script.js?v=2

This way we can manually or even automatically force the load of modified files and at the same time have it cached when no change is made on them.

Answer 1

CakePHP provides a way of applying timestamps to assets like CSS and JS files that only refreshes when the file changes. This is an equivalent of doing 'script.js?v=2', Cake would generate URLs like 'script.js?1442387965'.

In CakePHP 3.x (in config/app.php):-

'Asset' => [
    'force'
]

In CakePHP 2.x (in app/Config/core.php):-

 Configure::write('Asset.timestamp', 'force');

If you only want to apply the timestamps whilst debug mode is enabled set the above to true instead of force.