Better way to prevent browser caching of JavaScript files
caching, css, javascript, jquery, jsp
Solution
You want CSS and JS to be cached. It speeds up the loading of the web page when they come back. Adding a timestamp, your user's will be forced to download it time and time again.
If you want to make sure they always have a new version, than have your build system add a build number to the end of the file instead of a timestamp.
If you have issues with it just in dev, make sure to set up your browsers to not cache files or set headers on your dev pages to not cache.
Problem
This is how we prevent caching of JS and CSS files by browsers. This seems slightly hacky.. is there a better way? ``` <% //JSP code long ts = (new Date()).getTime(); //Used to prevent JS/CSS caching %> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="/css/management.css?<%=ts %>" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/pm.init.js?<%=ts %>"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/pm.util.func.js?<%=ts %>"></script> ``` Update: The reason we want to prevent caching is to ensure the newer version of the files are loaded when we do a new release.