JavaScript file not updating no matter what I do

Question

I have an external JavaScript file and whether in FireFox or Chrome  whether all browsing data is cleared  it will NOT update no matter what  I believe something happened when I made a backup of my file  which I simply added   thedate  to the end of the name  Then Save As back to the original name   Now I cannot seem to get rid of the old JS no matter what unless I change the name of the file  which I really don t want to do  or add the script to the PHP page  which crowds it   Anyone know the solution to this

User · Accepted Answer

You are sure you are linking to the same file and then editing that same file?

On some browser, you can use CTRL F5 to force a refresh (on the PC). On the Mac, it is Cmd Shift R

Firebug also has a net tab with "Disable Browser Cache".

But I want to give a warning here: even if you can hard refresh, how do you know your customers are getting the latest version? So you need to check, rather than just making sure you and your program manager can do a hard refresh and just go home and take the paycheck next month. If you want to do a job that change the world for the better, or leave the world a little bit better than you found it, you need to investigate more to make sure it works for your customers too (or else, sometimes the customer may call tech support, and tech support may read the script of "clear out the cookies and it will work", which is what happens to me sometimes). Some methods down at the bottom of this post can ensure the customers get the latest version.

Update 2020:

If you are using Chrome and the DevTools is open, you can click and hold the Refresh icon in front of the address bar, and a box will pop up, and you can choose to "Hard Reload" or even "Empty Cache and Hard Reload":

Update 2017:

If you use the Google Chrome debugger, it is the same, you can go to the Network section and make sure the "Disable cache (while DevTools is open)" is checked, in the Settings of the debugger panel.

Also, when you link the JavaScript file, use

<script src="my-js-file.js?v=1"></script>

or v=2, and so forth, when you definitely want to refresh the file. Or you can go to the console and do a Date.now() and get a timestamp, such as 1491313943549, and use

<script src="my-js-file.js?t=1491313943549"></script>

Some building tools will do that automatically for you, or can be configured to do that, making it something like:

<script src="main.742a4952.js"></script>

which essentially will bust the cache.

Note that when you use the v=2 or t=1491313943549, or main.742a4952.js, you also have the advantage that for your users, they definitely will get the newer version as well.

User · Answer

Don t forget to check any errors in webpack compilation  Sometimes the application js in app javascript packs  doesn t reload due to webpack compilation error

User · Answer

The solution I use is  Using firefox 1  using web developer --  Web Console 2  open the java-script file in new tab  3  Refresh the new tab you should see your new code  4  Refresh the original page  5  You should see your changes

User · Answer

A little late to the party  but if you put this in your html  it will keep your website from updating the cache   It takes the website a little longer to load  but for debugging purposes i like it   Taken from this answer  How to programmatically empty browser cache      lt meta http-equiv  cache-control  content  no-cache  gt   lt meta http-equiv  expires  content  0  gt   lt meta http-equiv  pragma  content  no-cache  gt

User · Answer

Are you 100  sure your browser is even loading the script  Go to your page in Firefox and use the console in Firebug to check if the script has been loaded or not

User · Answer

The best way around browsercaches is to append a random number to the path of the js file   Example in pseudo code      generate a random number int i   Random Next    echo   lt script src  a js      i     gt  lt  script gt      This will make sure your browser always reloads the file  because it thinks it s a different file because of the random number in the url   The server will always return the file and ignore what comes after the

User · Answer

Rename your js file to something else temporarily  This is the only thing that worked for me

User · Answer

I ve had this problem before  it s very frustrating but I found a work around   Type in the full address of the js file  i e  yourhost com javascript js  and load it   You will probably see the old version load   Then hit f5 to refresh that page and you should see the new version load   The js file will now be updated in your cache and the code should run as you expect

User · Answer

1 Clear browser cache in browser developer tools 2 Under Network tab     select Disable cache option 3 Restarted browser 4 Force reload Js file command shift R in mac    Make sure the fresh war is deployed properly on the Server side

User · Answer

I was going insane trying to get my js files to refresh and I tried everything  Then I did a header check and remembered I was using Cloudflare    In Cloudflare you can use dev mode to disable proxy

User · Answer

I have the same problem for awhile  and manage to figure out    And my case was because I have 2 javascript with the same function name

User · Answer

I had this problem and solved in Chrome by just disabling Cache  - Click F12  - Go at Network tab  - Click on  Disable Cache

User · Answer

How about adding a   2  to the  tag    lt script src  a js 2  gt  lt  script gt   The server should return the same file with or without the   2   but the browser should see it as a different file and redownload  You can just change this query string whenever the file is changed   adapted from  http   blog httpwatch com 2007 12 10 two-simple-rules-for-http-caching

[javascript] JavaScript file not updating no matter what I do

Update 2020:

Update 2017:

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