[webkit-dev] WebKit caching

[Adam Thorsen]

I would like to prevent a WebKit WebView instance in Cocoa  from  
caching certain content.  I've attempted to prevent this using several  
approaches, including:

1.  Overriding the NSURLCache cachedResponseForRequest and  
cachedResponse forRequest methods
2.  Handling -(NSURLRequest *)webView:(WebView *)sender resource:(id)  
willSendRequest:(NSURLRequest *) redirectResponse:(NSURLResponse *)  
fromDataSource:(WebDataSource *)dataSource
	a) tried setting the cache policy to  
NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringCacheData, among other settings
        b) tried appending a random string onto the end of the  
resource url before passing it along (i.e. something like http://blah.com/file.js?23234234234)
3.  Clearing the cache by setting the shared url cache (via  
NSURLCache ) and calling removeAllCachedResponses before each page load.
4. Setting preferences on the WebView:

    WebPreferences *prefs = [webView preferences];
    [prefs setUsesPageCache:NO];

and

    WebPreferences *prefs = [webView preferences];
    [prefs setPrivateBrowsingEnabled:YES];


None of these approaches seem to prevent the webview from caching  
javascript resources.  Based on its behavior, I believe that on  
initial page load it checks the last-modified value in each response  
header and caches resources in memory that have not been modified  
within a certain period of time.  Recently modified files (within the  
past few minutes) are not cached.

My ultimate goal  is simply to prevent the webview from caching  
javascript and css files, and I am open to any suggestions on how to  
do that.  However, based on my above hypothesis about how WebKit  
handles caching internally, I believe that if I could rewrite the  
response headers such that last-modified is always a recent value, I  
could prevent WebKit from caching.

Currently I can view the response header by implementing:

- (void)webView:(WebView *)sender resource:(id)identifier  
didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response fromDataSource: 
(WebDataSource *)dataSource

and calling allHeaderFields on the response.  However, there appears  
to be no way to modify the response before sending it on to the  
webview for display.  Are there any suggestions on how to do this?

Thanks,
-Adam
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