Need to clear browers cache automatically for my site

[angelhdz]

I need to clear the browsers cache for my site automatically with java or html or php. That's because I will add new levels on my flash game swf , and the people won't see the changes because they will have the old or cached swf on their systems, and I don't want complaints. I read something on google but I didn't understand well. Maybe someone can shed some light on me? Hehe


Or maybe disabling cache for my site at all? Thanks

[fruitbeard]

Hi,

you can try this

<?php 
function clearBrowserCache() {
    header("Pragma: no-cache");
    header("Cache: no-cache");
    header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");
    header("Expires: Mon, 9 Jul 1995 05:00:00 GMT");
}
clearBrowserCache();
?>

[angelhdz]

Do i put that on my site's html, or do i have to create the .php apart and call it from the html? Thanks

[fruitbeard]

you would need to call your page .php to use the php code

you can always use html code

<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1">
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache">

[angelhdz]

Perfect. I will try that. Thanks. I'm new with all this of progamming languages. I started with basic html, then actionscript 2, and now i'm begining with python, html5, java etc...

[Musicman]

Hi,

in case it does not work (you are telling the browser to reload the html/php part, not the flash part), there are three options
a) modify name of your swf - perhaps add some ?version=47 to the url
b) check whether your host runs apache and supports mod_expires
c) deliver the swf file via php and send some no-cache headers

Musicman

[angelhdz]

Oh! Thanks for the feedback hehe!

For the moment, I have my game/site hosted in my own computer, in Windows IIS Server 7 so i dont know if It supports mod_expires...but I think I can configure it so it supports it, i reed something about "scripts" in the options of IIS.

Anyway, i will try HTML method first

<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="-1">
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache"> 

If that does't work, the php then

<?php
function clearBrowserCache() {
    header("Pragma: no-cache");
    header("Cache: no-cache");
    header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");
    header("Expires: Mon, 9 Jul 1995 05:00:00 GMT");
}
clearBrowserCache();
?>

And name my site index.php

Hope this works. The browser's cache is apart of the flash's sharedobjects, right? Because I want the shared objects (.sol) to be cache. They holds the "Saved" levels of the game and other variables. The only thing i dont want to cache is the .swf flash movie itself, because I constantly overwrite the SWF with new levels. Thanks

[fruitbeard]

Hi,

for the swf you might want to have your load command looking something similar to this.

loadMovie("myFile.swf?val="+random(99999), myLoadArea);

you can't always be sure that people have flash settings enabled for local storage, I do turn it off now and then.

[angelhdz]

Most people, don't even know they can configure flash settings hehe...

May you explain me what does that script do? I tried to understand it buy i don't get a clue...

[fruitbeard]

Hi,

It will basically always load the newest flash movie each time.

and the flash settings, right click a flash movie, click settings (not global settings) if it is clickable (it wont be clickable if a movie has no AS or very low key AS) then select the folder icon (local storage) set the amount to whatever it allows/ or none for off essentially.

[angelhdz]

Yes I know about the local storage...but it only takes effects on my computer, so users would have to do the same in order to have always the updated swf, and don't "store" the files. But anyway i don't want the users/players to delete the Shared objects (.sol) caching, because as i said, they hold the last played level variables.

Now I understand the random function, I will apply it to my loaded swf. Thank you very much fruitbeard!