Bug 69705 – [Soup] The Soup backend should communicate per-request cache preferences to the SoupCache

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: WONTFIX
• Component: WebKitGTK

[Martin Robinson]

Each request from WebKit land has a cache policy. The possible cache policies are defined in ResourceRequestBase.h. They are:


    enum ResourceRequestCachePolicy {
        UseProtocolCachePolicy, // normal load
        ReloadIgnoringCacheData, // reload
        ReturnCacheDataElseLoad, // back/forward or encoding change - allow stale data
        ReturnCacheDataDontLoad  // results of a post - allow stale data and only use cache
    };

These map directly to NSURLRequestCachePolicy from Cocoa land: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSURLRequest_Class/Reference/Reference.html

In practical terms, this means that when a user in Epiphany holds shift and clicks the reload button, not only will the request skip in the in-memory cache, it will also skip the disk cache.

[Martin Robinson]

This requires changes to the SoupCache in libsoup. My initial idea for this API would be something like this: soup_cache_set_message_cache_policy(msg, SOUP_CACHE_POLICY_IGNORE_CACHE);

The policy could be stored as a piece of data attached to the message or the SoupCache could keep an internal table of policies.

[Martin Robinson]

The cache policy values also suggest that other disk cache implementations cache results of POST. Is this unusual? SoupCache only seems to cache GET requests.

[Dan Winship]

(In reply to comment #1)
> This requires changes to the SoupCache in libsoup. My initial idea for this API would be something like this: soup_cache_set_message_cache_policy(msg, SOUP_CACHE_POLICY_IGNORE_CACHE);

I'd say soup_message_set_cache_policy(msg, policy) (and get_cache_policy(), and a gobject property)

[Martin Robinson]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > This requires changes to the SoupCache in libsoup. My initial idea for this API would be something like this: soup_cache_set_message_cache_policy(msg, SOUP_CACHE_POLICY_IGNORE_CACHE);
> 
> I'd say soup_message_set_cache_policy(msg, policy) (and get_cache_policy(), and a gobject property)

I prefer your approach immensely, because it allows third-party features to access the property.

[Michael Catanzaro]

Obsolete, soup cache is only used by EFL nowadays, and we should change that.