Mojolicious template cache is stale

Question

I'm currently developing a small single-page Web app using Mojolicious. The app has a Javascript frontend (using Backbone) that talks to a REST-ish API; the layout of the source is roughly:

use Mojolicious::Lite;

# ... setup code ...

get '/' => sub {
    my $c = shift;
    # fetch+stash data for bootstrapped collections...
    $c->render('app_template');
};

get '/api_endpoint' => sub {
    my $c = shift;
    # fetch appropriate API data...
    $c->render(json => $response);
};

# ... more API endpoints ...

app->start;

The app template uses EP, but very minimally; the only server-side template directives just insert JSON for bootstrapped collections. It's deployed via Apache as a plain CGI script. (This isn't optimal, but it's for low-traffic internal use, and more intricate server configuration is problematic in context.) Perl CGI is configured via mod_perl.

This works most of the time, but occasionally the renderer somehow gets the idea that it should cache the template and ignore changes to it. The debug records in error_log show "Rendering cached template" rather than the normal "Rendering template", and my new changes to the template stop appearing in the browser. I can't find a reliable way to stop this, though it will eventually stop on its own according to conditions I can't discern.

How can I make the app notice template changes reliably? Alternatively, how can I disable template caching completely?

Answer 1

How can I make the app notice template changes reliably?

This is what the morbo development server is for. Morbo wouldn't be used for your live code deployment, but for a development environment where you are continually changing your code and templates. Generally changes to live code and templates are meant to be handled by restarting the application server, or Apache in your case. (Hypnotoad has a hot-restart capability for this purpose)

Alternatively, how can I disable template caching completely?

To do this, add the following setup code (outside of routes, after use Mojolicious::Lite):

app->renderer->cache->max_keys(0);