Posted by Edward Diener on 01/25/08 21:11

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
> Edward Diener wrote:
>
>> I am working on a web application which programatically changes an image
>> on the server side ( via ImageMagick ) on the roundtrip between client
>> and server. When the web page, in which the img tag resides, is
>> redisplayed, I need Firefox
>
> [and probably any other normal browser]
>
>> to reread the web page in order to redisplay the image correctly
>> rather than take the image from its cache.
> <schnipp>
>
> Suggestion: programmatically change the filename of the image in your
> HTML. Are you generating pages on the fly? Add a timestamp to both the
> <img src="" .. and the same to the filename on the server.
>
> <img src="mypic200801251408.jpg" alt="..." height="..." width="...">
>
> Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it will definitely
> override the cache. :-)

It is ridiculous to have to manipulate the image by constantly changing
its filename just to get a browser not to use the cache for that image,
but if we can not come up with any other solution I guess that is what
we will have to do. Is there really no other way to tell browsers to
ignore the image in its cache ? It is unbelievable to me that this basic
problem in web application programming in the year 2008 is unsolvable
with the current web browser environment except through such a technique
as constant renaming for every client-server roundtrip.

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