Reason RichFaces doesn't set client-side Expiry headers?

[kennardconsulting]

Hi guys,

First, many thanks for such an awesome component library!

My question: is there any reason RichFaces doesn't set the client-side HTTP Expiry header (and associated No-Cache headers) on its resources?

Using Firefox's FireBug, you can see almost all resources report '304 Not Modified'...

/a4j/g/3_3_1.GAorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/events.js.ui
/a4j/g/3_3_1.GAorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/utils.js.ui
/a4j/g/3_3_1.GAorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/jquery/jquery.js.ui
...many more

...but you still need to do a server trip to obtain that 304. There are around 10 such requests per page.

I have had good success in my own code dramatically improving performance by setting client side Expiry headers of, say, 1 hour for all .js, .css and image files.

Is there a reason RichFaces doesn't too? Or is there somewhere I can turn it on?

Regards,

Richard.

[ilya_shaikovsky]

you could define load strategies to ALL in order to request resources as combined packs.

[kennardconsulting]

Ilya,

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Unfortunately I believe your suggestion is orthogonal to mine. I don't use every RichFaces widget, so I'm not keen to load everything as a combined pack.

All I'm asking is not to reload the resources for every page. As an experiment I tried putting a filter around RichFaces...

<filter>
 <filter-name>ExpiryFilter</filter-name>
 <filter-class>com.kennardconsulting.core.servlet.http.HttpResponseHeadersFilter</filter-class>
 <init-param>
 <param-name>ExpiresInMinutes</param-name>
 <param-value>60</param-value>
 </init-param>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
 <filter-name>ExpiryFilter</filter-name>
 <url-pattern>/a4j/s/*</url-pattern>
 <url-pattern>/a4j/g/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

...this succeeded in significantly reducing my HTTP requests (down from over 10 per page to 1 per page) without any ill effects that I can see.

Is there a reason this isn't done by default? Perhaps I should open a JIRA?

Regards,

Richard.

[ilya_shaikovsky]

Nick already works under your question but seems has no quick answer. Yes feel free to create issue in order to be updated with the results of his investigations.

B.t.w. you could load your resources as combined pack even if you not need all the components resources. read about our new Maven resource dependency plugin. https://www.jboss.org/community/docs/DOC-13329

[nbelaevski]

Try setting

org.ajax4jsf.DEFAULT_EXPIRE

context init parameter.

[kennardconsulting]

Nick,

Thanks for your reply.

That flag appears to be the right idea but wrongly implemented. I have opened a JIRA: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/RF-7452

Regards,

Richard.

[nbelaevski]

Hi Richard,

Thanks, I'll check this.