flash no-cache issues 1

[sysadmin42]

I have a flash program that loads a directory listing (specifically for playing music) that a user can click on. My problem is, if the files in the directory change, the only way I can get that listing to refresh is by manually clearing the cached files. Most users have no idea how to do that manually.

How can I get the SWF to keep from caching? I've tried the following:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Cache-Control" CONTENT="no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=5">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:40:42 GMT"> <!-- also Expires: -1 -->

---- and/or ----

header("Expires: 0"); header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT"); header("cache-control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate"); header("Pragma: no-cache");

Any ideas?

 

[DJTN]

You will need to load the external file via a script like in ASP. The trick is to add a random number at the end of the URL and fool flash into thinking it's a new file. For example:

To load the file I would call
loader.asp?Filename=dir.txt&RandomNumber=458298374

Build the URL in actionscript, creating a random number at the end.

This should at least get you going in the right direction.

 

[sysadmin42]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Where should I put the random number and the url?

 

[frozenpeas]

What I do is add the random number to the end of the Flash element.

Example (using PHP):

swf/menu.swf?<? echo rand();?>

That way, you are sort of tricking the browser into thinking it's a different file every time because it will load menu.swf?38283 or menu.swf?92848, and so on.

frozenpeas
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