I have added a cache manifest file to my website for caching static content and faster load times. However, the page referencing the cache manifest file also gets cached by default. I want to cache things like images, css, and js files, but I don't want to cache the page itself because it's dynamic and generated by PHP.
Is there any way to cache the static resources ON a page, but not the actual page itself?
The browser should already be caching static resources based on the cache headers in the HTTP responses for those resources (cache-control, expires, etc) provided the headers are present. They should look something like this:
cache-control:private, max-age=31536000
date:Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:22:25 GMT
expires:Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:22:25 GMT
You should be able to see these headers using the browser's built-in developer tools, plugins or extensions like FireBug, or a debugging proxy like Fiddler or Charles. If they're absent, many HTTP servers can be configured to automatically include these headers based on rules you specify. Failing that, you can implement your own "handlers" that will serve the resources and tack on the headers necessary to trigger browser caching.
Using an HTML5 cache manifest will signal capable browsers that the page/application should be available offline. The browser will store the page, as well as the items referenced in the manifest so that they can be displayed sans network connection.
You can force your Web browser to always download a file by adding that file to the NETWORK section of your cache manifest:
NETWORK:
index.php # index.php will always be downloaded
Anyway, cache manifests are made to allow HTML5 applications to work off-line, so it's probably i bad idea to to that: your app won't work off-line.
