HTTP Caching

Besides server-side caching that we have described in the previous sections, Web applications may also exploit client-side caching to save the time for generating and transmitting the same page content.

To use client-side caching, you may configure yii\filters\HttpCache as a filter for controller actions whose rendering result may be cached on the client-side. HttpCache only works for GET and HEAD requests. It can handle three kinds of cache-related HTTP headers for these requests:

• Last-Modified
• Etag
• Cache-Control

Last-Modified Header

The Last-Modified header uses a timestamp to indicate if the page has been modified since the client caches it.

You may configure the yii\filters\HttpCache::$lastModified property to enable sending the Last-Modified header. The property should be a PHP callable returning a UNIX timestamp about the page modification time. The signature of the PHP callable should be as follows,

/**
 * @param Action $action the action object that is being handled currently
 * @param array $params the value of the "params" property
 * @return int a UNIX timestamp representing the page modification time
 */
function ($action, $params)

The following is an example of making use of the Last-Modified header:

public function behaviors()
{
    return [
        [
            'class' => 'yii\filters\HttpCache',
            'only' => ['index'],
            'lastModified' => function ($action, $params) {
                $q = new \yii\db\Query();
                return $q->from('post')->max('updated_at');
            },
        ],
    ];
}

The above code states that HTTP caching should be enabled for the index action only. It should generate a Last-Modified HTTP header based on the last update time of posts. When a browser visits the index page for the first time, the page will be generated on the server and sent to the browser; If the browser visits the same page again and there is no post being modified during the period, the server will not re-generate the page, and the browser will use the cached version on the client-side. As a result, server-side rendering and page content transmission are both skipped.

ETag Header

The "Entity Tag" (or ETag for short) header use a hash to represent the content of a page. If the page is changed, the hash will be changed as well. By comparing the hash kept on the client-side with the hash generated on the server-side, the cache may determine whether the page has been changed and should be re-transmitted.

You may configure the yii\filters\HttpCache::$etagSeed property to enable sending the ETag header. The property should be a PHP callable returning a seed for generating the ETag hash. The signature of the PHP callable should be as follows,

/**
 * @param Action $action the action object that is being handled currently
 * @param array $params the value of the "params" property
 * @return string a string used as the seed for generating an ETag hash
 */
function ($action, $params)

The following is an example of making use of the ETag header:

public function behaviors()
{
    return [
        [
            'class' => 'yii\filters\HttpCache',
            'only' => ['view'],
            'etagSeed' => function ($action, $params) {
                $post = $this->findModel(\Yii::$app->request->get('id'));
                return serialize([$post->title, $post->content]);
            },
        ],
    ];
}

The above code states that HTTP caching should be enabled for the view action only. It should generate an ETag HTTP header based on the title and content of the requested post. When a browser visits the view page for the first time, the page will be generated on the server and sent to the browser; If the browser visits the same page again and there is no change to the title and content of the post, the server will not re-generate the page, and the browser will use the cached version on the client-side. As a result, server-side rendering and page content transmission are both skipped.

ETags allow more complex and/or more precise caching strategies than Last-Modified headers. For instance, an ETag can be invalidated if the site has switched to another theme.

Expensive ETag generation may defeat the purpose of using HttpCache and introduce unnecessary overhead, since they need to be re-evaluated on every request. Try to find a simple expression that invalidates the cache if the page content has been modified.

Note: In compliance to RFC 7232, HttpCache will send out both ETag and Last-Modified headers if they are both configured. And if the client sends both of the If-None-Match header and the If-Modified-Since header, only the former will be respected.

Cache-Control Header

The Cache-Control header specifies the general caching policy for pages. You may send it by configuring the yii\filters\HttpCache::$cacheControlHeader property with the header value. By default, the following header will be sent:

Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600

Session Cache Limiter

When a page uses session, PHP will automatically send some cache-related HTTP headers as specified in the session.cache_limiter PHP INI setting. These headers may interfere or disable the caching that you want from HttpCache. To prevent this problem, by default HttpCache will disable sending these headers automatically. If you want to change this behavior, you should configure the yii\filters\HttpCache::$sessionCacheLimiter property. The property can take a string value, including public, private, private_no_expire, and nocache. Please refer to the PHP manual about session_cache_limiter() for explanations about these values.

SEO Implications

Search engine bots tend to respect cache headers. Since some crawlers have a limit on how many pages per domain they process within a certain time span, introducing caching headers may help indexing your site as they reduce the number of pages that need to be processed.