Cfrgtkky

When I change a static file (here page.html), and then run appcfg.py update, even after deployment is successful and it says the new files are serving, if I curl for the file the change has not actually taken place.

Relevant excerpt from my app.yaml:

default_expiration: "10d"



- url: /

  static_files: static/page.html

  upload: static/page.html

  secure: always

Google's docs say "Static cache expiration - Unless told otherwise, web proxies and browsers retain files they load from a website for a limited period of time." There shouldn't be any browser cache as I am using curl to get the file, and I don't have a proxy set up at home at least.

Possible hints at the answer

Interestingly, if I curl for /static/page.html directly, it has updated, but if I curl for / which should point to the same file, it has not.

Also if I add some dummy GET arg, such as /?foo, then I can also see the updated version. I also tried adding the -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" option to my curl command, but I still got the stale version.

How do I see updates to / immediately after deploy?

As pointed out by Omair, the docs for the standard environment for Pyhton state that "files are likely to be cached by the user's browser, as well as by intermediate caching proxy servers such as Internet Service Providers". But I've found a way to flush static files cached by your app on Google Cloud.

Head to your Google Cloud Console and open your project. Under the left hamburger menu, head to Storage -> Browser. There you should find at least one Bucket: your-project-name.appspot.com. Under the Lifecycle column, click on the link with respect to your-project-name.appspot.com. Delete any existing rules, since they may conflict with the one you will create now.

Create a new rule by clicking on the 'Add rule' button. For the object conditions, choose only the 'Newer version' option and set it to 1. Don't forget to click on the 'Continue' button. For the action, select 'Delete' and click on the 'Continue' button. Save your new rule.

This new rule will take up to 24 hours to take effect, but at least for my project it took only a few minutes. Once it is up and running, the version of the files being served by your app under your-project-name.appspot.com will always be the latest deployed, solving the problem. Also, if you are routinely editing your static files, you should remove any expiration element from handlers related to those static files and the default_expiration element from the app.yaml file, which will help avoid unintended caching by other servers.

According to App Engine's documentation on static cache expiration, this could be due to caching servers between you and your application respecting the caching headers on the responses:

The expiration time will be sent in the Cache-Control and Expires HTTP response headers, and therefore, the files are likely to be cached by the user's browser, as well as by intermediate caching proxy servers such as Internet Service Providers.

Once a file is transmitted with a given cache expiration time, there is generally no way to clear it out of intermediate caches, even if you clear the browser cache or use Curl command with no-cache option. Re-deploying a new version of the app will not reset caches as well.

For files that needs to be modified, shorter expire times are recommended.