Disable cache for some images

I generate some images using a PHP lib.

Sometimes the browser does not load the new generated file.

How can I disable cache just for images created dynamically by me?

Note: I have to use same name for the created images over time.

A common and simple solution to this problem that feels like a hack but is fairly portable is to add a randomly generated query string to each request for the dynamic image.

So, for example -

<img src="image.png" />

Would become

<img src="image.png?dummy=8484744" />

Or

<img src="image.png?dummy=371662" />

From the point of view of the web-server the same file is accessed, but from the point of view of the browser no caching can be performed.

The random number generation can happen either on the server when serving the page (just make sure the page itself isn't cached...), or on the client (using JavaScript).

You will need to verify whether your web-server can cope with this trick.

Browser caching strategies can be controlled by HTTP headers. Remember that they are just a hint, really. Since browsers are terribly inconsistent in this (and any other) field, you'll need several headers to get the desired effect on a range of browsers.

header ("Pragma-directive: no-cache");
header ("Cache-directive: no-cache");
header ("Cache-control: no-cache");
header ("Pragma: no-cache");
header ("Expires: 0");

Solution 1 is not great. It does work, but adding hacky random or timestamped query strings to the end of your image files will make the browser re-download and cache every version of every image, every time a page is loaded, regardless of weather the image has changed or not on the server.

Solution 2 is useless. Adding nocache headers to an image file is not only very difficult to implement, but it's completely impractical because it requires you to predict when it will be needed in advance, the first time you load any image which you think might change at some point in the future.

Enter Etags...

The absolute best way I've found to solve this is to use ETAGS inside a .htaccess file in your images directory. The following tells Apache to send a unique hash to the browser in the image file headers. This hash only ever changes when the image file is modified and this change triggers the browser to reload the image the next time it is requested.

<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg)$">
FileETag MTime Size
</FilesMatch>

If you need to do it dynamically in the browser using javascript, here is an example...

<img id=graph alt="" 
  src="http://www.kitco.com/images/live/gold.gif" 
  />

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
    var d = new Date(); 
    document.getElementById("graph").src = 
      "http://www.kitco.com/images/live/gold.gif?ver=" + 
       d.getTime();
</script>

I checked all the answers and the best one seemed to be (which isn't):

<img src="image.png?cache=none">

at first.

However, if you add cache=none parameter (which is static "none" word), it doesn't effect anything, browser still loads from cache.

Solution to this problem was:

<img src="image.png?nocache=<?php echo time(); ?>">

where you basically add unix timestamp to make the parameter dynamic and no cache, it worked.

However, my problem was a little different: I was loading on the fly generated php chart image, and controlling the page with $_GET parameters. I wanted the image to be read from cache when the URL GET parameter stays the same, and do not cache when the GET parameters change.

To solve this problem, I needed to hash $_GET but since it is array here is the solution:

$chart_hash = md5(implode('-', $_GET));
echo "<img src='/images/mychart.png?hash=$chart_hash'>";

Edit:

Although the above solution works just fine, sometimes you want to serve the cached version UNTIL the file is changed. (with the above solution, it disables the cache for that image completely) So, to serve cached image from browser UNTIL there is a change in the image file use:

echo "<img src='/images/mychart.png?hash=" . filemtime('mychart.png') . "'>";

> filemtime() gets file modification time.

I know this topic is old, but it ranks very well in Google. I found out that putting this in your header works well;

<meta Http-Equiv="Cache-Control" Content="no-cache">
<meta Http-Equiv="Pragma" Content="no-cache">
<meta Http-Equiv="Expires" Content="0">
<meta Http-Equiv="Pragma-directive: no-cache">
<meta Http-Equiv="Cache-directive: no-cache">

I was just looking for a solution to this, and the answers above didn't work in my case (and I have insufficient reputation to comment on them). It turns out that, at least for my use-case and the browser I was using (Chrome on OSX), the only thing that seemed to prevent caching was:

Cache-Control = 'no-store'

For completeness i'm now using all 3 of 'no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate'

So in my case (serving dynamically generated images out of Flask in Python), I had to do the following to hopefully work in as many browsers as possible...

def make_uncached_response(inFile):
    response = make_response(inFile)
    response.headers['Pragma-Directive'] = 'no-cache'
    response.headers['Cache-Directive'] = 'no-cache'
    response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate'
    response.headers['Pragma'] = 'no-cache'
    response.headers['Expires'] = '0'
    return response

Changing the image source is the solution. You can indeed do this by adding a timestamp or random number to the image.

Better would be to add a checksum of eg the data the image represents. This enables caching when possible.

Let's add another solution one to the bunch.

Adding a unique string at the end is a perfect solution.

example.jpg?646413154

Following solution extends this method and provides both the caching capability and fetch a new version when the image is updated.

When the image is updated, the filemtime will be changed.

<?php
$filename = "path/to/images/example.jpg";
$filemtime = filemtime($filename);
?>

Now output the image:

<img src="images/example.jpg?<?php echo $filemtime; ?>" >

i had this problem and overcoming like this.

var newtags='<div class="addedimage"><h5>preview image</h5><img src="'+one+'?nocache='+Math.floor(Math.random() * 1000)+'"></div>';

I've used this to solve my similar problem ... displaying an image counter (from an external provider). It did not refresh always correctly. And after a random parameter was added, all works fine :)

I've appended a date string to ensure refresh at least every minute.

sample code (PHP):

$output .= "<img src=\"http://xy.somecounter.com/?id=1234567890&".date(ymdHi)."\" alt=\"somecounter.com\" style=\"border:none;\">";

That results in a src link like:

http://xy.somecounter.com/?id=1234567890&1207241014

If you have a hardcoded image URL, for example: http://example.com/image.jpg you can use php to add headers to your image.

First you will have to make apache process your jpg as php. See here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8025236/is-it-possible-to-execute-php-with-extension-file-php-jpg

Load the image (imagecreatefromjpeg) from file then add the headers from previous answers. Use php function header to add the headers.

Then output the image with the imagejpeg function.

Please notice that it's very insecure to let php process jpg images. Also please be aware I haven't tested this solution so it is up to you to make it work.

Simple, send one header location.

My site, contains one image, and after upload the image, there not change, then I add this code:

<?php header("Location: pagelocalimage.php"); ?>

Work's for me.