Related
The header Cache-Control: max-age=0 implies that the content is considered stale (and must be re-fetched) immediately, which is in effect the same thing as Cache-Control: no-cache.
I had this same question, and found some info in my searches (your question came up as one of the results). Here's what I determined...
There are two sides to the Cache-Control header. One side is where it can be sent by the web server (aka. "origin server"). The other side is where it can be sent by the browser (aka. "user agent").
When sent by the origin server
I believe max-age=0 simply tells caches (and user agents) the response is stale from the get-go and so they SHOULD revalidate the response (eg. with the If-Not-Modified header) before using a cached copy, whereas, no-cache tells them they MUST revalidate before using a cached copy. From 14.9.1 What is Cacheable:
no-cache
...a cache MUST NOT use the response
to satisfy a subsequent request
without successful revalidation with
the origin server. This allows an
origin server to prevent caching even
by caches that have been configured to
return stale responses to client
requests.
In other words, caches may sometimes choose to use a stale response (although I believe they have to then add a Warning header), but no-cache says they're not allowed to use a stale response no matter what. Maybe you'd want the SHOULD-revalidate behavior when baseball stats are generated in a page, but you'd want the MUST-revalidate behavior when you've generated the response to an e-commerce purchase.
Although you're correct in your comment when you say no-cache is not supposed to prevent storage, it might actually be another difference when using no-cache. I came across a page, Cache Control Directives Demystified, that says (I can't vouch for its correctness):
In practice, IE and Firefox have
started treating the no-cache
directive as if it instructs the
browser not to even cache the page.
We started observing this behavior
about a year ago. We suspect that
this change was prompted by the
widespread (and incorrect) use of this
directive to prevent caching.
...
Notice that of late, "cache-control:
no-cache" has also started behaving
like the "no-store" directive.
As an aside, it appears to me that Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate should basically mean the same thing as Cache-Control: no-cache. So maybe that's a way to get the MUST-revalidate behavior of no-cache, while avoiding the apparent migration of no-cache to doing the same thing as no-store (ie. no caching whatsoever)?
When sent by the user agent
I believe shahkalpesh's answer applies to the user agent side. You can also look at 13.2.6 Disambiguating Multiple Responses.
If a user agent sends a request with Cache-Control: max-age=0 (aka. "end-to-end revalidation"), then each cache along the way will revalidate its cache entry (eg. with the If-Not-Modified header) all the way to the origin server. If the reply is then 304 (Not Modified), the cached entity can be used.
On the other hand, sending a request with Cache-Control: no-cache (aka. "end-to-end reload") doesn't revalidate and the server MUST NOT use a cached copy when responding.
max-age=0
This is equivalent to clicking Refresh, which means, give me the latest copy unless I already have the latest copy.
no-cache
This is holding Shift while clicking Refresh, which means, just redo everything no matter what.
Old question now, but if anyone else comes across this through a search as I did, it appears that IE9 will be making use of this to configure the behaviour of resources when using the back and forward buttons. When max-age=0 is used, the browser will use the last version when viewing a resource on a back/forward press. If no-cache is used, the resource will be refetched.
Further details about IE9 caching can be seen on this msdn caching blog post.
In my recent tests with IE8 and Firefox 3.5, it seems that both are RFC-compliant. However, they differ in their "friendliness" to the origin server. IE8 treats no-cache responses with the same semantics as max-age=0,must-revalidate. Firefox 3.5, however, seems to treat no-cache as equivalent to no-store, which sucks for performance and bandwidth usage.
Squid Cache, by default, seems to never store anything with a no-cache header, just like Firefox.
My advice would be to set public,max-age=0 for non-sensitive resources you want to have checked for freshness on every request, but still allow the performance and bandwidth benefits of caching. For per-user items with the same consideration, use private,max-age=0.
I would avoid the use of no-cache entirely, as it seems it has been bastardized by some browsers and popular caches to the functional equivalent of no-store.
Additionally, do not emulate Akamai and Limelight. While they essentially run massive caching arrays as their primary business, and should be experts, they actually have a vested interest in causing more data to be downloaded from their networks. Google might not be a good choice for emulation, either. They seem to use max-age=0 or no-cache randomly depending on the resource.
max-age
When an intermediate cache is forced, by means of a max-age=0 directive, to revalidate
its own cache entry, and the client has supplied its own validator in the request, the
supplied validator might differ from the validator currently stored with the cache entry.
In this case, the cache MAY use either validator in making its own request without
affecting semantic transparency.
However, the choice of validator might affect performance. The best approach is for the
intermediate cache to use its own validator when making its request. If the server replies
with 304 (Not Modified), then the cache can return its now validated copy to the client
with a 200 (OK) response. If the server replies with a new entity and cache validator,
however, the intermediate cache can compare the returned validator with the one provided in
the client's request, using the strong comparison function. If the client's validator is
equal to the origin server's, then the intermediate cache simply returns 304 (Not
Modified). Otherwise, it returns the new entity with a 200 (OK) response.
If a request includes the no-cache directive, it SHOULD NOT include min-fresh,
max-stale, or max-age.
courtesy: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.9.4
Don't accept this as answer - I will have to read it to understand the true usage of it :)
I'm hardly a caching expert, but Mark Nottingham is. Here are his caching docs. He also has excellent links in the References section.
Based on my reading of those docs, it looks like max-age=0 could allow the cache to send a cached response to requests that came in at the "same time" where "same time" means close enough together they look simultaneous to the cache, but no-cache would not.
By the way, it's worth noting that some mobile devices, particularly Apple products like iPhone/iPad completely ignore headers like no-cache, no-store, Expires: 0, or whatever else you may try to force them to not re-use expired form pages.
This has caused us no end of headaches as we try to get the issue of a user's iPad say, being left asleep on a page they have reached through a form process, say step 2 of 3, and then the device totally ignores the store/cache directives, and as far as I can tell, simply takes what is a virtual snapshot of the page from its last state, that is, ignoring what it was told explicitly, and, not only that, taking a page that should not be stored, and storing it without actually checking it again, which leads to all kinds of strange Session issues, among other things.
I'm just adding this in case someone comes along and can't figure out why they are getting session errors with particularly iphones and ipads, which seem by far to be the worst offenders in this area.
I've done fairly extensive debugger testing with this issue, and this is my conclusion, the devices ignore these directives completely.
Even in regular use, I've found that some mobiles also totally fail to check for new versions via say, Expires: 0 then checking last modified dates to determine if it should get a new one.
It simply doesn't happen, so what I was forced to do was add query strings to the css/js files I needed to force updates on, which tricks the stupid mobile devices into thinking it's a file it does not have, like: my.css?v=1, then v=2 for a css/js update. This largely works.
User browsers also, by the way, if left to their defaults, as of 2016, as I continuously discover (we do a LOT of changes and updates to our site) also fail to check for last modified dates on such files, but the query string method fixes that issue. This is something I've noticed with clients and office people who tend to use basic normal user defaults on their browsers, and have no awareness of caching issues with css/js etc, almost invariably fail to get the new css/js on change, which means the defaults for their browsers, mostly MSIE / Firefox, are not doing what they are told to do, they ignore changes and ignore last modified dates and do not validate, even with Expires: 0 set explicitly.
This was a good thread with a lot of good technical information, but it's also important to note how bad the support for this stuff is in particularly mobile devices. Every few months I have to add more layers of protection against their failure to follow the header commands they receive, or to properly interpet those commands.
This is answered directly in the MDN docs about cache control:
Most HTTP/1.0 caches don't support no-cache directives, so
historically max-age=0 was used as a workaround. But only
max-age=0 could cause a stale response to be reused when caches
disconnected from the origin server. must-revalidate addresses that.
That's why the example below is equivalent to no-cache.
Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate
But for now, you can simply use no-cache instead.
And also in the MDN docs about cache validation:
It is often stated that the combination of max-age=0 and
must-revalidate has the same meaning as no-cache.
Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate
max-age=0 means that the
response is immediately stale, and must-revalidate means that it must
not be reused without revalidation once it is stale — so in
combination, the semantics seem to be the same as no-cache.
However, that usage of max-age=0 is a remnant of the fact that many
implementations prior to HTTP/1.1 were unable to handle the no-cache
directive — and so to deal with that limitation, max-age=0 was used as
a workaround.
But now that HTTP/1.1-conformant servers are widely deployed, there's
no reason to ever use that max-age=0-and-must-revalidate combination —
you should instead just use no-cache.
One thing that (surprisingly) hasn't been mentioned is that a request can explicitly indicate that it will accept stale data, using the max-stale directive. In that case, if the server responded with max-age=0, the cache would merely consider the response stale, and would be free to use it to satisfy the client's request [which asked for potentially-stale data]. By contrast, if the server sends no-cache that really does trump any request by the client (with max-stale) for stale data, as the cache MUST revalidate.
I use PHP to generate dynamic Web pages. As stated on the following tutorial (see link below), the MIME type of XHTML documents should be "application/xhtml+xml" when $_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'] allows it. Since you can serve the same page with 2 different MIMEs ("application/xhtml+xml" and "text/html") you should set the "Vary" HTTP header to "Accept". This will help the cache on proxies.
Link:
http://keystonewebsites.com/articles/mime_type.php
Now I'm not sure of the implication of:
header('Vary: Accept');
I'm not really sure of what 'Vary: Accept' will precisely do...
The only explanation I found is:
After the Content-Type header, a Vary
header is sent to (if I understand it
correctly) tell intermediate caches,
like proxy servers, that the content
type of the document varies depending
on the capabilities of the client
which requests the document.
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200408/content_negotiation/
Anyone can give me a "real" explanation of this header (with that value). I think I understand things like:
Vary: Accept-Encoding
where the cache on proxies could be based on the encoding of the page served, but I don't understand:
Vary: Accept
The cache-control header is the primary mechanism for an HTTP server to tell a caching proxy the "freshness" of a response. (i.e., how/if long to store the response in the cache)
In some situations, cache-control directives are insufficient. A discussion from the HTTP working group is archived here, describing a page that changes only with language. This is not the correct use case for the vary header, but the context is valuable for our discussion. (Although I believe the Vary header would solve the problem in that case, there is a Better Way.) From that page:
Vary is strictly for those cases where it's hopeless or excessively complicated for a proxy to replicate what the server would do.
RFC2616 "Header-Field Definitions" describes the header usage from the server perspective, RFC2616 "Caching Negotiated Responses" from a caching proxy perspective. It's intended to specify a set of HTTP request headers that determine uniqueness of a request.
A contrived example:
Your HTTP server has a large landing page. You have two slightly different pages with the same URL, depending if the user has been there before. You distinguish between requests and a user's "visit count" based on Cookies. But -- since your server's landing page is so large, you want intermediary proxies to cache the response if possible.
The URL, Last-Modified and Cache-Control headers are insufficient to give this insight to a caching proxy, but if you add Vary: Cookie, the cache engine will add the Cookie header to its caching decisions.
Finally, for small traffic, dynamic web sites -- I have always found the simple Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store and Pragma: no-cache sufficient.
Edit -- to more precisely answer your question: the HTTP request header 'Accept' defines the Content-Types a client can process. If you have two copies of the same content at the same URL, differing only in Content-Type, then using Vary: Accept could be appropriate.
Update 11 Sep 12:
I'm including a couple links that have appeared in the comments since this comment was originally posted. They're both excellent resources for real-world examples (and problems) with Vary: Accept; Iif you're reading this answer you need to read those links as well.
The first, from the outstanding EricLaw, on Internet Explorer's behavior with the Vary header and some of the challenges it presents to developers: Vary Header Prevents Caching in IE. In short, IE (pre IE9) does not cache any content that uses the Vary header because the request cache does not include HTTP Request headers. EricLaw (Eric Lawrence in the real world) is a Program Manager on the IE team.
The second is from Eran Medan, and is an on-going discussion of Vary-related unexpected behavior in Chrome: Backing doesn't handle Vary header correctly. It's related to IE's behavior, except the Chrome devs took a different approach -- though it doesn't appear to have been a deliberate choice.
Vary: Accept simply says that the response was generated based on the Accept header in the request. A request with a different Accept header might get a different response.
(You can see that the linked PHP code looks at $HTTP_ACCEPT. That's the value of the Accept request header.)
To HTTP caches, this means that the response must be cached with extra care. It is only going to be a valid match for later requests with exactly the same Accept header.
Now this only matters if the page is cacheable in the first place. By default, PHP pages aren't. A PHP page can mark the output as cacheable by sending certain headers (Expires, for example). But whether and how to do that is a different question.
This google webmaster video has a very good explanation about HTTP Vary header.
There are actually a significant number of new features coming soon (and already in Chrome) that make the Vary header extremely useful. For example, consider Client Hinting. When used in connection with images, for example, client hinting allows a server to optimize resources such as images depending on:
Image Width
Viewport Width
Type of encoding supported by browser (think WebP)
Downlink (essentially network speed)
So a server which supports those features would set the Vary header to indicate that.
Chrome advertises WebP support by setting "image/webp" as part of the Vary header for each request. So a server might rewrite an image as WebP if the browser supports it, so the proxy would need to check the header so as to not cache a WebP image and then serve it to a browser that doesn't support WebP. Obviously, if your server doesn't do that, it wouldn't matter. So since the server's response varies on the Accept request header, the response must include that so as not to confuse proxies:
Vary: Accept
Another example might be image width. On a mobile browser the Width header might be quite small for a responsive image, in comparison with what it would be if viewed from a desktop browser. So in that case Width would be added to the the Vary header is essential for proxy to not cache the small mobile version and serve it to desktop browsers, or vice versa. In that case, the header might include:
Vary: Accept, Width
Or in the case that a server supported all of the client hinting specs, the header would be something like:
Vary: Accept, DPR, Width, Save-Data, Downlink
The header Cache-Control: max-age=0 implies that the content is considered stale (and must be re-fetched) immediately, which is in effect the same thing as Cache-Control: no-cache.
I had this same question, and found some info in my searches (your question came up as one of the results). Here's what I determined...
There are two sides to the Cache-Control header. One side is where it can be sent by the web server (aka. "origin server"). The other side is where it can be sent by the browser (aka. "user agent").
When sent by the origin server
I believe max-age=0 simply tells caches (and user agents) the response is stale from the get-go and so they SHOULD revalidate the response (eg. with the If-Not-Modified header) before using a cached copy, whereas, no-cache tells them they MUST revalidate before using a cached copy. From 14.9.1 What is Cacheable:
no-cache
...a cache MUST NOT use the response
to satisfy a subsequent request
without successful revalidation with
the origin server. This allows an
origin server to prevent caching even
by caches that have been configured to
return stale responses to client
requests.
In other words, caches may sometimes choose to use a stale response (although I believe they have to then add a Warning header), but no-cache says they're not allowed to use a stale response no matter what. Maybe you'd want the SHOULD-revalidate behavior when baseball stats are generated in a page, but you'd want the MUST-revalidate behavior when you've generated the response to an e-commerce purchase.
Although you're correct in your comment when you say no-cache is not supposed to prevent storage, it might actually be another difference when using no-cache. I came across a page, Cache Control Directives Demystified, that says (I can't vouch for its correctness):
In practice, IE and Firefox have
started treating the no-cache
directive as if it instructs the
browser not to even cache the page.
We started observing this behavior
about a year ago. We suspect that
this change was prompted by the
widespread (and incorrect) use of this
directive to prevent caching.
...
Notice that of late, "cache-control:
no-cache" has also started behaving
like the "no-store" directive.
As an aside, it appears to me that Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate should basically mean the same thing as Cache-Control: no-cache. So maybe that's a way to get the MUST-revalidate behavior of no-cache, while avoiding the apparent migration of no-cache to doing the same thing as no-store (ie. no caching whatsoever)?
When sent by the user agent
I believe shahkalpesh's answer applies to the user agent side. You can also look at 13.2.6 Disambiguating Multiple Responses.
If a user agent sends a request with Cache-Control: max-age=0 (aka. "end-to-end revalidation"), then each cache along the way will revalidate its cache entry (eg. with the If-Not-Modified header) all the way to the origin server. If the reply is then 304 (Not Modified), the cached entity can be used.
On the other hand, sending a request with Cache-Control: no-cache (aka. "end-to-end reload") doesn't revalidate and the server MUST NOT use a cached copy when responding.
max-age=0
This is equivalent to clicking Refresh, which means, give me the latest copy unless I already have the latest copy.
no-cache
This is holding Shift while clicking Refresh, which means, just redo everything no matter what.
Old question now, but if anyone else comes across this through a search as I did, it appears that IE9 will be making use of this to configure the behaviour of resources when using the back and forward buttons. When max-age=0 is used, the browser will use the last version when viewing a resource on a back/forward press. If no-cache is used, the resource will be refetched.
Further details about IE9 caching can be seen on this msdn caching blog post.
In my recent tests with IE8 and Firefox 3.5, it seems that both are RFC-compliant. However, they differ in their "friendliness" to the origin server. IE8 treats no-cache responses with the same semantics as max-age=0,must-revalidate. Firefox 3.5, however, seems to treat no-cache as equivalent to no-store, which sucks for performance and bandwidth usage.
Squid Cache, by default, seems to never store anything with a no-cache header, just like Firefox.
My advice would be to set public,max-age=0 for non-sensitive resources you want to have checked for freshness on every request, but still allow the performance and bandwidth benefits of caching. For per-user items with the same consideration, use private,max-age=0.
I would avoid the use of no-cache entirely, as it seems it has been bastardized by some browsers and popular caches to the functional equivalent of no-store.
Additionally, do not emulate Akamai and Limelight. While they essentially run massive caching arrays as their primary business, and should be experts, they actually have a vested interest in causing more data to be downloaded from their networks. Google might not be a good choice for emulation, either. They seem to use max-age=0 or no-cache randomly depending on the resource.
max-age
When an intermediate cache is forced, by means of a max-age=0 directive, to revalidate
its own cache entry, and the client has supplied its own validator in the request, the
supplied validator might differ from the validator currently stored with the cache entry.
In this case, the cache MAY use either validator in making its own request without
affecting semantic transparency.
However, the choice of validator might affect performance. The best approach is for the
intermediate cache to use its own validator when making its request. If the server replies
with 304 (Not Modified), then the cache can return its now validated copy to the client
with a 200 (OK) response. If the server replies with a new entity and cache validator,
however, the intermediate cache can compare the returned validator with the one provided in
the client's request, using the strong comparison function. If the client's validator is
equal to the origin server's, then the intermediate cache simply returns 304 (Not
Modified). Otherwise, it returns the new entity with a 200 (OK) response.
If a request includes the no-cache directive, it SHOULD NOT include min-fresh,
max-stale, or max-age.
courtesy: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.9.4
Don't accept this as answer - I will have to read it to understand the true usage of it :)
I'm hardly a caching expert, but Mark Nottingham is. Here are his caching docs. He also has excellent links in the References section.
Based on my reading of those docs, it looks like max-age=0 could allow the cache to send a cached response to requests that came in at the "same time" where "same time" means close enough together they look simultaneous to the cache, but no-cache would not.
By the way, it's worth noting that some mobile devices, particularly Apple products like iPhone/iPad completely ignore headers like no-cache, no-store, Expires: 0, or whatever else you may try to force them to not re-use expired form pages.
This has caused us no end of headaches as we try to get the issue of a user's iPad say, being left asleep on a page they have reached through a form process, say step 2 of 3, and then the device totally ignores the store/cache directives, and as far as I can tell, simply takes what is a virtual snapshot of the page from its last state, that is, ignoring what it was told explicitly, and, not only that, taking a page that should not be stored, and storing it without actually checking it again, which leads to all kinds of strange Session issues, among other things.
I'm just adding this in case someone comes along and can't figure out why they are getting session errors with particularly iphones and ipads, which seem by far to be the worst offenders in this area.
I've done fairly extensive debugger testing with this issue, and this is my conclusion, the devices ignore these directives completely.
Even in regular use, I've found that some mobiles also totally fail to check for new versions via say, Expires: 0 then checking last modified dates to determine if it should get a new one.
It simply doesn't happen, so what I was forced to do was add query strings to the css/js files I needed to force updates on, which tricks the stupid mobile devices into thinking it's a file it does not have, like: my.css?v=1, then v=2 for a css/js update. This largely works.
User browsers also, by the way, if left to their defaults, as of 2016, as I continuously discover (we do a LOT of changes and updates to our site) also fail to check for last modified dates on such files, but the query string method fixes that issue. This is something I've noticed with clients and office people who tend to use basic normal user defaults on their browsers, and have no awareness of caching issues with css/js etc, almost invariably fail to get the new css/js on change, which means the defaults for their browsers, mostly MSIE / Firefox, are not doing what they are told to do, they ignore changes and ignore last modified dates and do not validate, even with Expires: 0 set explicitly.
This was a good thread with a lot of good technical information, but it's also important to note how bad the support for this stuff is in particularly mobile devices. Every few months I have to add more layers of protection against their failure to follow the header commands they receive, or to properly interpet those commands.
This is answered directly in the MDN docs about cache control:
Most HTTP/1.0 caches don't support no-cache directives, so
historically max-age=0 was used as a workaround. But only
max-age=0 could cause a stale response to be reused when caches
disconnected from the origin server. must-revalidate addresses that.
That's why the example below is equivalent to no-cache.
Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate
But for now, you can simply use no-cache instead.
And also in the MDN docs about cache validation:
It is often stated that the combination of max-age=0 and
must-revalidate has the same meaning as no-cache.
Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate
max-age=0 means that the
response is immediately stale, and must-revalidate means that it must
not be reused without revalidation once it is stale — so in
combination, the semantics seem to be the same as no-cache.
However, that usage of max-age=0 is a remnant of the fact that many
implementations prior to HTTP/1.1 were unable to handle the no-cache
directive — and so to deal with that limitation, max-age=0 was used as
a workaround.
But now that HTTP/1.1-conformant servers are widely deployed, there's
no reason to ever use that max-age=0-and-must-revalidate combination —
you should instead just use no-cache.
One thing that (surprisingly) hasn't been mentioned is that a request can explicitly indicate that it will accept stale data, using the max-stale directive. In that case, if the server responded with max-age=0, the cache would merely consider the response stale, and would be free to use it to satisfy the client's request [which asked for potentially-stale data]. By contrast, if the server sends no-cache that really does trump any request by the client (with max-stale) for stale data, as the cache MUST revalidate.
I'm told to prevent user-info leaking, only "no-cache" in response is not enough. "no-store" is also necessary.
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store
After reading this spec http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html, I'm still not quite sure why.
My current understanding is that it is just for intermediate cache server. Even if "no-cache" is in response, intermediate cache server can still save the content to non-volatile storage. The intermediate cache server will decide whether using the saved content for following request. However, if "no-store" is in the response, the intermediate cache sever is not supposed to store the content. So, it is safer.
Is there any other reason we need both "no-cache" and "no-store"?
I must clarify that no-cache does not mean do not cache. In fact, it means "revalidate with server" before using any cached response you may have, on every request.
must-revalidate, on the other hand, only needs to revalidate when the resource is considered stale.
If the server says that the resource is still valid then the cache can respond with its representation, thus alleviating the need for the server to resend the entire resource.
no-store is effectively the full do not cache directive and is intended to prevent storage of the representation in any form of cache whatsoever.
I say whatsoever, but note this in the RFC 2616 HTTP spec:
History buffers MAY store such responses as part of their normal operation
But this is omitted from the newer RFC 7234 HTTP spec in potentially an attempt to make no-store stronger, see:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7234#section-5.2.1.5
Under certain circumstances, IE6 will still cache files even when Cache-Control: no-cache is in the response headers.
The W3C states of no-cache:
If the no-cache directive does not
specify a field-name, then a cache
MUST NOT use the response to satisfy a
subsequent request without successful
revalidation with the origin server.
In my application, if you visited a page with the no-cache header, then logged out and then hit back in your browser, IE6 would still grab the page from the cache (without a new/validating request to the server). Adding in the no-store header stopped it doing so. But if you take the W3C at their word, there's actually no way to control this behavior:
History buffers MAY store such responses as part of their normal operation.
General differences between browser history and the normal HTTP caching are described in a specific sub-section of the spec.
From the HTTP 1.1 specification:
no-store:
The purpose of the no-store directive is to prevent the inadvertent release or retention of sensitive information (for example, on backup tapes). The no-store directive applies to the entire message, and MAY be sent either in a response or in a request. If sent in a request, a cache MUST NOT store any part of either this request or any response to it. If sent in a response, a cache MUST NOT store any part of either this response or the request that elicited it. This directive applies to both non- shared and shared caches. "MUST NOT store" in this context means that the cache MUST NOT intentionally store the information in non-volatile storage, and MUST make a best-effort attempt to remove the information from volatile storage as promptly as possible after forwarding it.
Even when this directive is associated with a response, users might explicitly store such a response outside of the caching system (e.g., with a "Save As" dialog). History buffers MAY store such responses as part of their normal operation.
The purpose of this directive is to meet the stated requirements of certain users and service authors who are concerned about accidental releases of information via unanticipated accesses to cache data structures. While the use of this directive might improve privacy in some cases, we caution that it is NOT in any way a reliable or sufficient mechanism for ensuring privacy. In particular, malicious or compromised caches might not recognize or obey this directive, and communications networks might be vulnerable to eavesdropping.
no-store should not be necessary in normal situations, and can harm both speed and usability. It is intended for use where the HTTP response contains information so sensitive it should never be written to a disk cache at all, regardless of the negative effects that creates for the user.
How it works:
Normally, even if a user agent such as a browser determines that a response shouldn't be cached, it may still store it to the disk cache for reasons internal to the user agent. This version may be utilised for features like "view source", "back", "page info", and so on, where the user hasn't necessarily requested the page again, but the browser doesn't consider it a new page view and it would make sense to serve the same version the user is currently viewing.
Using no-store will prevent that response being stored, but this may impact the browser's ability to give "view source", "back", "page info" and so on without making a new, separate request for the server, which is undesirable. In other words, the user may try viewing the source and if the browser didn't keep it in memory, they'll either be told this isn't possible, or it will cause a new request to the server. Therefore, no-store should only be used when the impeded user experience of these features not working properly or quickly is outweighed by the importance of ensuring content is not stored in the cache.
My current understanding is that it is just for intermediate cache server. Even if "no-cache" is in response, intermediate cache server can still save the content to non-volatile storage.
This is incorrect. Intermediate cache servers compatible with HTTP 1.1 will obey the no-cache and must-revalidate instructions, ensuring that content is not cached. Using these instructions will ensure that the response is not cached by any intermediate cache, and that all subsequent requests are sent back to the origin server.
If the intermediate cache server does not support HTTP 1.1, then you will need to use Pragma: no-cache and hope for the best. Note that if it doesn't support HTTP 1.1 then no-store is irrelevant anyway.
If you want to prevent all caching (e.g. force a reload when using the back button) you need:
no-cache for IE
no-store for Firefox
There's my information about this here:
http://blog.httpwatch.com/2008/10/15/two-important-differences-between-firefox-and-ie-caching/
For chrome, no-cache is used to reload the page on a re-visit, but it still caches it if you go back in history (back button). To reload the page for history-back as well, use no-store. IE needs must-revalidate to work in all occasions.
So just to be sure to avoid all bugs and misinterpretations I always use
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate
if I want to make sure it reloads.
If a caching system correctly implements no-store, then you wouldn't need no-cache. But not all do. Additionally, some browsers implement no-cache like it was no-store. Thus, while not strictly required, it's probably safest to include both.
Note that Internet Explorer from version 5 up to 8 will throw an error when trying to download a file served via https and the server sending Cache-Control: no-cache or Pragma: no-cache headers.
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/812935/en-us
The use of Cache-Control: no-store and Pragma: private seems to be the closest thing which still works.
Originally we used no-cache many years ago and did run into some problems with stale content with certain browsers... Don't remember the specifics unfortunately.
We had since settled on JUST the use of no-store. Have never looked back or had a single issue with stale content by any browser or intermediaries since.
This space is certainly dominated by reality of implementations vs what happens to have been written in various RFCs. Many proxies in particular tend to think they do a better job of "improving performance" by replacing the policy they are supposed to be following with their own.
Just to make things even worse, in some situations, no-cache can't be used, but no-store can:
http://faindu.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/ie7-ssl-xml-flex-error-2032-stream-error/
To answer the question, there are two players here, the client (request) and the server (response).
Client:
The client can only request with ONE cache method. There are different methods and if not specified, will use default.
default: Inspect browser cache:
If cached and "fresh": Return from cache.
If cached, stale, but still "valid": Return from cache, and schedule a fetch to update cache (for next use).
If cached and stale: Fetch with conditions, cache, and return.
If not cached: Fetch, cache, and return.
no-store: Fetch and return.
reload: Fetch, cache, and return. (default-4)
no-cache: Inspect browser cache:
If cached: Fetch with conditions, cache, and return. (default-3)
If not cached: Fetch, cache, and return. (default-4)
force-cache: Inspect browser cache:
If cached: Return it regardless if stale.
If not cache: Fetch, cache, and return. (default-4)
only-if-cached: Inspect browser cache:
If cached: Return it regardless if stale.
If not cached: Throw network error.
Notes:
Still "valid" means the current age is within the stale-while-revalidate lifetime. It needs "revalidation", but is still acceptable to return.
"Fetch" here, for simplicity, is short for "non-conditional network
fetch".
"Fetch with conditions" means fetch using headers like
If-Modified-Since, or ETag so the server can respond with 304: (Not Modified).
https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/#concept-request-cache-mode
Server::
Now that we understand what the client can do, the server responses make more sense.
Looking at the Cache-Control header, if the server returns:
no-store: Tells client to not use cache at all
no-cache: Tells client it should do conditional requests and ignore freshness
max-age: Tells client how long a cache is "fresh"
stale-while-revalidate: Tells client how long cache is "valid"
immutable: Cache forever
Now we can put it all together. That means the only possibilities are:
Non-conditional network fetch
Conditional network fetch
Return stale cache
Return stale but valid cache
Return fresh cache
Return any cache
Any combination of client, or server can dictate what method, or set of methods, to use. If the server returns no-store, it's not going to hit the cache, no matter what the client request type. If the client request was no-store, it doesn't matter what the server returns, it won't cache. If the client doesn't specify a request type, the server will dictate it with Cache-Control.
It makes no sense for a server to return both no-cache and no-store since no-store overrides everything. Yes, you've probably seen both together, and it's useless outside of broken browser implementations. Still, no-store has been part of spec since 1999: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2616#section-14.9.2
In real life usage, if your server supports 304: Not Modified, and you want to use client cache as a way to improve speed, but still want to force a network fetch, use no-cache. If don't support 304, and want to force a network fetch, use no-store. If you're okay with cache sometimes, use freshness and revalidation headers.
In reality, if you're mixing up no-cache and no-store on the client, very little would change. Then, just a couple of headers get sent and there will different internal responses handled by the browser. An issue can occur if you use no-cache and then forget to use it later. no-cache tells it to store the response in the cache, and a later request without it might trigger internal cache.
There are times when you may want to mix methods even on the same resource based on context. For example, you may want to use reload on a service worker and background sync, but use default for the web page itself. This is where you can manipulate the user agent (browser) cache to your liking. Just remember that the server generally has the final say as to how the cache should work.
To clarify some possible future confusion. The client can use the Cache-Control header on the request, to tell the server to not use its own cache system when responding. This is unrelated to the browser/server dynamic, and more about the server/database dynamic.
Also no-store technically means must not store to any non-volatile storage (disk) and release it from volatile storage (memory) ASAP. In practice, it means don't use a cache at all. The command actually goes both ways. A client request with no-store shouldn't write to disk or database and is meant to transient.
TL;DR: no-store overrides no-cache. Setting both is useless, unless we are talking out-of-spec or HTTP/1.0 browsers that don't support no-store (Maybe IE11?). Use no-cache for 304 support.
A pretty old topic but I'll share some recent ideas:
no-store: Must not attempt to store anything, and must also take action to delete any copy it might have.
no-cache: Never use a local copy without first validating with the origin server. It prevents all possibility of a cache hit, even with fresh resources.
So, answering the question, using only one of them is enough.
Also, some (not very) recent works prove that browsers are more Cache-Control compatible nowadays.
OWASP discusses this:
What's the difference between the cache-control directives: no-cache, and no-store?
The no-cache directive in a response indicates that the response must not be used to serve a subsequent request i.e. the cache must not display a response that has this directive set in the header but must let the server serve the request. The no-cache directive can include some field names; in which case the response can be shown from the cache except for the field names specified which should be served from the server. The no-store directive applies to the entire message and indicates that the cache must not store any part of the response or any request that asked for it.
Am I totally safe with these directives?
No. But generally, use both Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store and Pragma: no-cache, in addition to Expires: 0 (or a sufficiently backdated GMT date such as the UNIX epoch). Non-html content types like pdf, word documents, excel spreadsheets, etc often get cached even when the above cache control directives are set (although this varies by version and additional use of must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, and s-maxage=0 in practice can sometimes result at least in file deletion upon browser closure in some cases due to browser quirks and HTTP implementations). Also, 'Autocomplete' feature allows a browser to cache whatever the user types in an input field of a form. To check this, the form tag or the individual input tags should include 'Autocomplete="Off" ' attribute. However, it should be noted that this attribute is non-standard (although it is supported by the major browsers) so it will break XHTML validation.
Source here.
I'm running into some HTTP caching issues, caused by some downstream apps not putting Cache-Control headers on time-sensitive data. I need to make the case that this is a broken situation.
Is there any succinct statement available online about permissible or common response-handling behaviors by caches and agents when the Cache-Control header is not present for HTTP 1.1? I see RFC2616, but it doesn't seem to include any normative or SHOULD statements about responses without a Cache-Control header.
I think when this directive is missing it is up to the browser to determine what it wants to do. (In this case your server may be the browser)
This is a pretty good write up of the way various browsers handled the issue:
http://www.f5.com/pdf/white-papers/browser-behavior-wp.pdf
Hope that helps.
There's no way to know what the proxies are doing or even which ones your customers are hitting, but if there's no Cache-Control header, they may well be sending a cached result. What you can do is add the header from the client-side (if thats an option), so the client would send the request for the resource with a header like this: Cache-Control:no-cache
More info on caching here:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/caching#LeverageBrowserCaching
And here's a related stack-overflow question:
Why is Cache-Control attribute sent in request header (client to server)?
Hope it helps!