How to force IE to reload javascript

Question

I m using IE 8 on Vista  and everytime I change a javascript file and then start debugging  I have to hit Ctrl F5 to have it reload my javascript  Is there any way to make it automatically reload javascript when I start debugging  but not lose the performance gains when just browsing the net   Yeah yeah I know you probably don t like IE  but keep in mind the question isn t  What s the best browser

User · Answer

This should do the trick for ASP NET  The concept is the same as shown in the PHP example  Since the URL is different everytime the script is loaded  neither browser of proxy should cache the file  I m used to put my JavaScript code into separate files  and wasted a significant amount of time with Visual Studio until I realized that it wouldn t reload the JavaScript files     lt script src  Scripts main js version  lt    DateTime Now Ticks ToString      type  text javascript   lt  script    Full example     lt    Page Title  Home Page  Language  C   MasterPageFile    Site master  AutoEventWireup  true      CodeBehind  Default aspx cs  Inherits  WebApplication1  Default       lt asp Content ID  HeaderContent  runat  server  ContentPlaceHolderID  HeadContent        lt script src  Scripts jquery-1 4 1-vsdoc js  type  text javascript   lt  script        lt script src  Scripts main js version  lt    DateTime Now Ticks ToString      type  text javascript   lt  script       lt script type  text javascript              document  ready function                                      myInit                                        lt  script   lt  asp Content    Obvously  this solution should only be used during the development stage  and should be removed before posting the site

User · Answer

To eliminate the need to repeatedly press F5 in an IE tab while developing a website  use ReloadIt       For each webpage displayed in IE  you can configure a filename  a directory  or a set of them  If any change occurs in any of those configured paths  ReloadIt refreshes the IE tab   A simple tool  It just works    This will reload everything  not just javascript

User · Answer

If you are in IE11  you can tell IE to always refresh from the server for a specific browsing session with IE Developer Tools    Open IE Developer Tools with F12 key  Go to Network tab   Click on button  always refresh from the server       Sorry for french capture

User · Answer

If you are looking to just do this on YOUR browser  a k a  not forcing this on your users   then I would NOT set your code to not utilize the cache   As Jos   said  there is a performance loss     And I wouldn t turn off caching on IE altogether  because you lose that performance gain for every website you visit   You can tell IE to always refresh from the server for a specific site or browsing session    Open IE Developer Tools Choose Cache from the Menu Click to check  Always Refresh From Server    Or  for the keyboard-shortcut-philes  like myself  out there      F12  Alt C  Down Arrow  Alt R    NOTE OF CAUTION   Having said this    Keep in mind that anytime you develop test in a different way than the site will be viewed in production  you run the risk of getting mixed results   A good example is this caching issue   We found an issue where IE was caching our Ajax calls and not updating results from  a GET method   If we HAD disabled caching in IE  we would have never seen this problem in development  and would have deployed it to production like this

User · Answer

Add a date of modification of js file at the end of your URL  With PHP it would look something like this   echo   lt script type  text javascript  src  js something js     filemtime  js something js        gt  lt  script gt      When your script will be reloaded every time you update it

User · Answer

When you work with web page or javascript file you want it to be reloaded every time you change it   You can change settings in IE 8 so the browser will never cache    Follow this simple steps    Select Tools-  Internet Options  In General tab click on Settings button in Browsing history section  Click on  Every time I visit the webpage  radio button  Click OK button

User · Answer

Add a string at the end of your URL to break the cache  I usually do  with PHP     lt script src   my js file js  lt   time    gt   gt  lt  script gt    So that it reloads every time while I m working on it  and then take it off when it goes into production  In reality I abstract this out a little more but the idea remains the same   If you check out the source of this website  they append the revision number at the end of the URL in a similar fashion to force the changes upon us whenever they update the javascript files

User · Answer

In javascript I think that it is not possible  because modern browsers have a policy on security in javascripts   and clearing the cache is a very violating one   You can try to add    lt META HTTP-EQUIV  Pragma  CONTENT  no-cache  gt    In your header  but you will have performance loss

User · Answer

If you are running ASP Net  check out the Bundling and Minification module available in ASP Net 4 5   http   www asp net mvc tutorials mvc-4 bundling-and-minification  You can declare a  bundle  that points to your javascript file   Every time your file changes  it will generate a new querystring suffix    but will only do so when the file changes   This makes it super simple to deploy updates  because you don t even have to think about updating your  tags with new version numbers   It can also bundle multiple  js files together into one file  and minify them  all in one step   Ditto for css

User · Answer

Paolo s general idea  i e  effectively changing some part of the request uri  is your best bet  However  I d suggest using a more static value such as a version number that you update when you have changed your script file so that you can still get the performance gains of caching   So either something like this    lt script src   my js file js version 2 1 3   gt  lt  script gt    or maybe   lt script src   my js file 2 1 3 js   gt  lt  script gt    I prefer the first option because it means you can maintain the one file instead of having to constantly rename it  which for example maintains consistent version history in your source control   Of course either one  as I ve described them  would involve updating your include statements each time  so you may want to come up with a dynamic way of doing it  such as replacing a fixed value with a dynamic one every time you deploy  using Ant or whatever

[javascript] How to force IE to reload javascript?

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