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One feature of service workers is the ability to save a set of files to the cache when the service worker is installing. This is often referred to as "precaching", since you are caching content ahead of the service worker being used.
The main reason for doing this is that it gives developers control over the cache, meaning they can determine when and how long a file is cached as well as serve it to the browser without going to the network, meaning it can be used to create web apps that work offline.
Workbox takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of precaching by simplifying the API and ensuring assets are downloaded efficiently.
How workbox-precaching WorksWhen a web app is loaded for the first time, workbox-precaching
will look at all the assets you want to download, remove any duplicates and hook up the relevant service worker events to download and store the assets. URLs that already include versioning information (like a content hash) are used as cache keys without any further modification. URLs that don't include versioning information have an extra URL query parameter appended to their cache key representing a hash of their content that Workbox generates at build time.
workbox-precaching
does all of this during the service worker's install
event.
When a user later revisits your web app and you have a new service worker with different precached assets, workbox-precaching
will look at the new list and determine which assets are completely new and which of the existing assets need updating, based on their revisioning. Any new assets, or updating revisions, will be added to the cache during the new service worker's install
event.
This new service worker won't be used to respond to requests until its activate
event has been triggered. It's in the activate
event that workbox-precaching
will check for any cached assets that are no longer present in the list of current URLs, and remove those from the cache.
workbox-precaching
will perform these steps each time your service worker is installed and activated, ensuring the user has the latest assets, and only downloading the files that have changed.
Calling precacheAndRoute()
or addRoute()
will create a route that matches requests for precached URLs.
The response strategy used in this route is cache-first: the precached response will be used, unless that cached response is not present (due to some unexpected error), in which case a network response will be used instead.
The order in which you call precacheAndRoute()
or addRoute()
is important. You would normally want to call it early on in your service worker file, before registering any additional routes with registerRoute()
. If you did call registerRoute()
first, and that route matched an incoming request, whatever strategy you defined in that additional route will be used to respond, instead of the cache-first strategy used by workbox-precaching
.
workbox-precaching
expects an array of objects with a url
and revision
property. This array is sometimes referred to as a precache manifest:
import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';
precacheAndRoute([
{url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
{url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
{url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
// ... other entries ...
]);
This list references a set of URLs, each with their own piece of "revisioning" information.
For the second and third object in the example above, the revision
property is set to null
. This is because the revisioning information is in the URL itself, which is generally a best practice for static assets.
The first object (/index.html
) explicitly sets a revision property, which is an auto-generated hash of the file's contents. Unlike JavaScript and CSS resources, HTML files generally cannot include revisioning information in their URLs, otherwise links to these files on the web would break any time the content of the page changed.
By passing a revision property to precacheAndRoute()
, Workbox can know when the file has changed and update it accordingly.
workbox-precaching
allowed the precache manifest to contain string URLs in addition objects with a url
and revision
property. In version 5 this is deprecated. Now you must always pass an object and in order to prevent Workbox from revisioning the URL in the cache, you must explicitly set the revision
property to null
. Passing a string will continue to work (with a warning) in version 5, but in version 6 this will no longer be supported.
Workbox comes with tools to help with generating this list:
workbox-build
: This is a node package that can be used in a gulp task or as an npm run script.workbox-webpack-plugin
: webpack users can use this plugin.workbox-cli
: Our CLI can also be used to generate the list of assets and add them to your service worker.One thing that workbox-precaching
will do out of the box is manipulate the incoming network requests to try and match precached files. This accommodates for common practices on the web.
For example, a request for /
can usually be satisfied by the file at /index.html
.
Below is the list of manipulations that workbox-precaching
performs by default, and how you can alter that behavior.
Requests with search parameters can be altered to remove specific values, or remove all values.
By default, search parameters that start with utm_
or exactly match fbclid
are removed, meaning that a request for /about.html?utm_campaign=abcd
will be fulfilled with a precached entry for /about.html
.
You can ignore a different set of search parameters using ignoreURLParametersMatching
:
import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';
precacheAndRoute(
[
{url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
{url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
{url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
],
{
// Ignore all URL parameters.
ignoreURLParametersMatching: [/.*/],
}
);
Directory Index
Requests ending in a /
will, by default, be matched against entries with an index.html
appended to the end. This means an incoming request for /
can automatically be handled with the precached entry /index.html
.
You can alter this to something else, or disable it completely, by setting directoryIndex
:
import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';
precacheAndRoute(
[
{url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
{url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
{url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
],
{
directoryIndex: null,
}
);
Clean URLs
If a request fails to match the precache, we'll add .html
to the end to support "clean" URLs (a.k.a. "pretty" URLs). This means a request like /about
will be handled by the precached entry for /about.html
.
You can disable this behavior by setting cleanUrls
:
import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';
precacheAndRoute([{url: '/about.html', revision: 'b79cd4'}], {
cleanUrls: false,
});
Custom Manipulations
If you want to define custom matches from incoming requests to precached assets, you can do so with the urlManipulation
option. This should be a callback that returns an array of possible matches.
import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';
precacheAndRoute(
[
{url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
{url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
{url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
],
{
urlManipulation: ({url}) => {
// Your logic goes here...
return [alteredUrlOption1, alteredUrlOption2];
},
}
);
Advanced Usage Using PrecacheController Directly
By default, workbox-precaching
will set up the install
and activate
listeners for you. For developers familiar with service workers, this may not be desirable if you need more control.
Instead of using the default export, you can use the PrecacheController
directly to add items to the precache, determine when these assets are installed, and when cleanup should occur.
import {PrecacheController} from 'workbox-precaching';
const precacheController = new PrecacheController();
precacheController.addToCacheList([
{url: '/styles/example-1.abcd.css', revision: null},
{url: '/styles/example-2.1234.css', revision: null},
{url: '/scripts/example-1.abcd.js', revision: null},
{url: '/scripts/example-2.1234.js', revision: null},
]);
precacheController.addToCacheList([{
url: '/index.html',
revision: 'abcd',
}, {
url: '/about.html',
revision: '1234',
}]);
self.addEventListener('install', (event) => {
// Passing in event is required in Workbox v6+
event.waitUntil(precacheController.install(event));
});
self.addEventListener('activate', (event) => {
// Passing in event is required in Workbox v6+
event.waitUntil(precacheController.activate(event));
});
self.addEventListener('fetch', (event) => {
const cacheKey = precacheController.getCacheKeyForURL(event.request.url);
event.respondWith(caches.match(cacheKey).then(...));
});
Reading Precached Assets Directly
There are times when you might need to read a precached asset directly, outside the context of the routing that workbox-precaching
can automatically perform. For instance, you might want to precache partial HTML templates that then need to be retrieved and used when constructing a full response.
In general, you can use the Cache Storage API to obtain the precached Response
objects, but there is one wrinkle: the URL cache key that needs to be used when calling cache.match()
might contain a versioning parameter that workbox-precaching
automatically creates and maintains.
To get the correct cache key you can call getCacheKeyForURL()
, passing in the original URL, and then use the result to perform a cache.match()
on the appropriate cache.
import {cacheNames} from 'workbox-core';
import {getCacheKeyForURL} from 'workbox-precaching';
const cache = await caches.open(cacheNames.precache);
const response = await cache.match(getCacheKeyForURL('/precached-file.html'));
Alternatively, if all you need is the precached Response
object, you can call matchPrecache()
, which will automatically use the correct cache key and search in the correct cache:
import {matchPrecache} from 'workbox-precaching';
const response = await matchPrecache('/precached-file.html');
Note:If you are using your own PrecacheController
instance, instead of using the default instance via precacheAndRoute
, you should call the matchPrecache()
or getCacheKeyForURL()
methods directly on that instance. Clean Up Old Precaches
Most releases of Workbox maintain the same format for storing precached data, and precaches created by older versions of Workbox can normally be used as-is by newer releases. Rarely, though, there is a breaking change in precaching storage that requires existing users to re-download everything, and which renders previously precached data obsolete. (Such a change happened in between the Workbox v3 and v4 releases.)
This obsolete data shouldn't interfere with normal operations, but it does contribute towards your overall storage quota usage, and it can be friendlier to your users to explicitly delete it. You can do this by adding cleanupOutdatedCaches()
to your service worker, or setting cleanupOutdatedCaches: true
if you're using one of Workbox's build tools to generate your service worker.
Some developers might want the added guarantees offered by subresource integrity enforcement when retrieving precached URLs from the network.
An additional, optional property called integrity
can be added to any entry in the precache manifest. If provided, it will be used as the integrity
value when constructing the Request
used to populate the cache. If there's a mismatch, the precaching process will fail.
Determining which precache manifest entries should have integrity
properties, and figuring out the appropriate values to use, is outside the scope of Workbox's build tools. Instead, developers who want to opt-in to this functionality should modify the precache manifest that Workbox generates to add in the appropriate info themselves. The manifestTransform
option in Workbox's build tools configuration can help:
const ssri = require('ssri');
const integrityManifestTransform = (originalManifest, compilation) => {
const warnings = [];
const manifest = originalManifest.map(entry => {
// If some criteria match:
if (entry.url.startsWith('...')) {
// This has to be a synchronous function call, for example:
// compilation will be set when using workbox-webpack-plugin.
// When using workbox-build directly, you can read the file's
// contents from disk using, e.g., the fs module.
const asset = compilation.getAsset(entry.url);
entry.integrity = ssri.fromData(asset.source.source()).toString();
// Push a message to warnings if needed.
}
return entry;
});
return {warnings, manifest};
};
// Then add manifestTransform: [integrityManifestTransform]
// to your Workbox build configuration.
Types Properties
deletedCacheRequests
string[]
Performs efficient precaching of assets.
PropertiesCreate a new PrecacheController.
The constructor
function looks like:
(options?: PrecacheControllerOptions) => {...}
options
PrecacheControllerOptions optional
Deletes assets that are no longer present in the current precache manifest. Call this method from the service worker activate event.
Note: this method calls event.waitUntil()
for you, so you do not need to call it yourself in your event handlers.
The activate
function looks like:
(event: ExtendableEvent) => {...}
This method will add items to the precache list, removing duplicates and ensuring the information is valid.
The addToCacheList
function looks like:
(entries: (string | PrecacheEntry)[]) => {...}
Array of entries to precache.
createHandlerBoundToURL
void
Returns a function that looks up url
in the precache (taking into account revision information), and returns the corresponding Response
.
The createHandlerBoundToURL
function looks like:
(url: string) => {...}
The precached URL which will be used to lookup the Response
.
Returns the cache key used for storing a given URL. If that URL is unversioned, like `/index.html', then the cache key will be the original URL with a search parameter appended to it.
The getCacheKeyForURL
function looks like:
(url: string) => {...}
A URL whose cache key you want to look up.
The versioned URL that corresponds to a cache key for the original URL, or undefined if that URL isn't precached.
Returns a list of all the URLs that have been precached by the current service worker.
The getCachedURLs
function looks like:
() => {...}
getIntegrityForCacheKey
void
The getIntegrityForCacheKey
function looks like:
(cacheKey: string) => {...}
The subresource integrity associated with the cache key, or undefined if it's not set.
Returns a mapping of a precached URL to the corresponding cache key, taking into account the revision information for the URL.
The getURLsToCacheKeys
function looks like:
() => {...}
returns
Map<stringstring>
A URL to cache key mapping.
Precaches new and updated assets. Call this method from the service worker install event.
Note: this method calls event.waitUntil()
for you, so you do not need to call it yourself in your event handlers.
The install
function looks like:
(event: ExtendableEvent) => {...}
This acts as a drop-in replacement for cache.match()
with the following differences:
E.g., matchPrecache('index.html')
will find the correct precached response for the currently active service worker, even if the actual cache key is '/index.html?__WB_REVISION__=1234abcd'
.
The matchPrecache
function looks like:
(request: string | Request) => {...}
The key (without revisioning parameters) to look up in the precache.
returns
Promise<Response>
Adds items to the precache list, removing any duplicates and stores the files in the cache" when the service worker installs.
This method can be called multiple times.
The precache
function looks like:
(entries: (string | PrecacheEntry)[]) => {...}
integrity
string optional
PrecacheFallbackPlugin
allows you to specify an "offline fallback" response to be used when a given strategy is unable to generate a response.
It does this by intercepting the handlerDidError
plugin callback and returning a precached response, taking the expected revision parameter into account automatically.
Unless you explicitly pass in a PrecacheController
instance to the constructor, the default instance will be used. Generally speaking, most developers will end up using the default.
Constructs a new PrecacheFallbackPlugin with the associated fallbackURL.
The constructor
function looks like:
(config: object) => {...}
A precached URL to use as the fallback if the associated strategy can't generate a response.
The constructor
function looks like:
(precacheController: PrecacheController, options?: PrecacheRouteOptions) => {...}
A PrecacheController
instance used to both match requests and respond to fetch events.
The setCatchHandler
function looks like:
(handler: RouteHandler) => {...}
A callback function that returns a Promise resolving to a Response
cleanURLs
boolean optional
directoryIndex
string optional
ignoreURLParametersMatching
RegExp[] optional
A workbox-strategies.Strategy
implementation specifically designed to work with workbox-precaching.PrecacheController
to both cache and fetch precached assets.
Note: an instance of this class is created automatically when creating a PrecacheController
; it's generally not necessary to create this yourself.
The constructor
function looks like:
(options?: PrecacheStrategyOptions) => {...}
options
PrecacheStrategyOptions optional
fetchOptions
RequestInit optional
matchOptions
CacheQueryOptions optional
The _awaitComplete
function looks like:
(responseDone: Promise<Response>, handler: StrategyHandler, request: Request, event: ExtendableEvent) => {...}
responseDone
Promise<Response>
The _getResponse
function looks like:
(handler: StrategyHandler, request: Request, event: ExtendableEvent) => {...}
returns
Promise<Response>
The _handleFetch
function looks like:
(request: Request, handler: StrategyHandler) => {...}
returns
Promise<Response>
The _handleInstall
function looks like:
(request: Request, handler: StrategyHandler) => {...}
returns
Promise<Response>
Perform a request strategy and returns a Promise
that will resolve with a Response
, invoking all relevant plugin callbacks.
When a strategy instance is registered with a Workbox workbox-routing.Route
, this method is automatically called when the route matches.
Alternatively, this method can be used in a standalone FetchEvent
listener by passing it to event.respondWith()
.
The handle
function looks like:
(options: FetchEvent | HandlerCallbackOptions) => {...}
A FetchEvent
or an object with the properties listed below.
returns
Promise<Response>
Similar to workbox-strategies.Strategy~handle
, but instead of just returning a Promise
that resolves to a Response
it it will return an tuple of [response, done]
promises, where the former (response
) is equivalent to what handle()
returns, and the latter is a Promise that will resolve once any promises that were added to event.waitUntil()
as part of performing the strategy have completed.
You can await the done
promise to ensure any extra work performed by the strategy (usually caching responses) completes successfully.
The handleAll
function looks like:
(options: FetchEvent | HandlerCallbackOptions) => {...}
A FetchEvent
or an object with the properties listed below.
returns
[Promise<Response>, Promise<void>]
A tuple of [response, done] promises that can be used to determine when the response resolves as well as when the handler has completed all its work.
workbox-precaching.urlManipulation(Methods addPlugins()
{ url }: object,
): URL[]
workbox-precaching.addPlugins(
plugins: WorkboxPlugin[],
): void
Adds plugins to the precaching strategy.
addRoute()workbox-precaching.addRoute(
options?: PrecacheRouteOptions,
): void
Add a fetch
listener to the service worker that will respond to [network requests]https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API/Using_Service_Workers#Custom_responses_to_requests
with precached assets.
Requests for assets that aren't precached, the FetchEvent
will not be responded to, allowing the event to fall through to other fetch
event listeners.
workbox-precaching.cleanupOutdatedCaches(): void
Adds an activate
event listener which will clean up incompatible precaches that were created by older versions of Workbox.
workbox-precaching.createHandlerBoundToURL(
url: string,
): RouteHandlerCallback
Helper function that calls PrecacheController#createHandlerBoundToURL
on the default PrecacheController
instance.
If you are creating your own PrecacheController
, then call the PrecacheController#createHandlerBoundToURL
on that instance, instead of using this function.
The precached URL which will be used to lookup the Response
.
workbox-precaching.getCacheKeyForURL(
url: string,
): string | undefined
Takes in a URL, and returns the corresponding URL that could be used to lookup the entry in the precache.
If a relative URL is provided, the location of the service worker file will be used as the base.
For precached entries without revision information, the cache key will be the same as the original URL.
For precached entries with revision information, the cache key will be the original URL with the addition of a query parameter used for keeping track of the revision info.
ParametersThe URL whose cache key to look up.
The cache key that corresponds to that URL.
workbox-precaching.matchPrecache(
request: string | Request,
): Promise<Response | undefined>
Helper function that calls PrecacheController#matchPrecache
on the default PrecacheController
instance.
If you are creating your own PrecacheController
, then call PrecacheController#matchPrecache
on that instance, instead of using this function.
The key (without revisioning parameters) to look up in the precache.
Promise<Response | undefined>
workbox-precaching.precache(
entries: (string | PrecacheEntry)[],
): void
Adds items to the precache list, removing any duplicates and stores the files in the cache" when the service worker installs.
This method can be called multiple times.
Please note: This method will not serve any of the cached files for you. It only precaches files. To respond to a network request you call workbox-precaching.addRoute
.
If you have a single array of files to precache, you can just call workbox-precaching.precacheAndRoute
.
Array of entries to precache.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2017-11-27 UTC.
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