Disable nginx cache for JavaScript files

Ok, I'm almost giving up on this, but how can I disable the caching from Nginx for JavaScript files? I'm using a docker container with Nginx. When I now change something in the JavaScript file, I need multiple reloads until the new file is there.

How do I know it's Nginx and not the browser/docker?

Browser: I used curl on the command line to simulate the request and had the same issues. Also, I'm using a CacheKiller plugin and have cache disabled in Chrome Dev Tools.

Docker: When I connect to the container's bash, and use cat after changing the file, I get the correct result immediately.

I changed my nginx.conf for the sites-enabled to this (which I found in another stackoverflow thread)

location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|flv|swf|xml|html|htm)$ {
    # clear all access_log directives for the current level
    access_log off;
    add_header Cache-Control no-cache;
    # set the Expires header to 31 December 2037 23:59:59 GMT, and the Cache-Control max-age to 10 years
    expires 1s;
}

However, after rebuilding the containers (and making sure it's in the container with cat), it still didn't work. This here is the complete .conf

server {
    server_name app;
    root /var/www/app/web;

    # Redirect to blog
    location ~* ^/blog {
        proxy_set_header Accept-Encoding "";
        sub_filter 'https://testproject.wordpress.com/' '/blog/';
        sub_filter_once off;
        rewrite ^/blog/(.*) /$1 break;
        rewrite ^/blog / break;
        proxy_pass     https://testproject.wordpress.com;
    }

    # Serve index.html only for exact root URL
    location / {
        try_files $uri /app_dev.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/(app|app_dev|config)\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass php-upstream;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param HTTPS off;
        # Prevents URIs that include the front controller. This will 404:
        # http://domain.tld/app_dev.php/some-path
        # Remove the internal directive to allow URIs like this
        internal;
    }

    location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|flv|swf|xml|html|htm)$ {
        # clear all access_log directives for the current level
        access_log off;
        add_header Cache-Control no-cache;
        # set the Expires header to 31 December 2037 23:59:59 GMT, and the Cache-Control max-age to 10 years
        expires 1s;
    }


    error_log /var/log/nginx/app_error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/app_access.log;
}

Solution 1:

I have the following nginx virtual host (static content) for local development work to disable all browser caching:

server {
    listen 8080;
    server_name localhost;

    location / {
        root /your/site/public;
        index index.html;

        # kill cache
        add_header Last-Modified $date_gmt;
        add_header Cache-Control 'no-store, no-cache';
        if_modified_since off;
        expires off;
        etag off;
    }
}

No cache headers sent:

$ curl -I http://localhost:8080
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.12.1
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2017 16:19:30 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 2076
Connection: keep-alive
Last-Modified: Monday, 24-Jul-2017 16:19:30 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store
Accept-Ranges: bytes

Last-Modified is always current time.

Note: nginx's $date_gmt format is not per the HTTP spec (see changing the format).

Solution 2:

The expires and add_header directives have no impact on NGINX caching the files, those are purely about what the browser sees.

What you likely want instead is:

location stuffyoudontwanttocache {
    # don't cache it
    proxy_no_cache 1;
    # even if cached, don't try to use it
    proxy_cache_bypass 1; 
}

Though usually .js etc is the thing you would cache, so perhaps you should just disable caching entirely?

Solution 3:

What you are looking for is a simple directive like:

location ~* \.(?:manifest|appcache|html?|xml|json)$ {
    expires -1;
}

The above will not cache the extensions within the (). You can configure different directives for different file types.