workbox-precaching

One feature of service workers is the ability to save a set of files to the cache when the service worker is installing. This is often referred to as "precaching", since you are caching content ahead of the service worker being used.

The main reason for doing this is that it gives developers control over the cache, meaning they can determine when and how long a file is cached as well as serve it to the browser without going to the network, meaning it can be used to create web apps that work offline.

Workbox takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of precaching by simplifying the API and ensuring assets are downloaded efficiently.

# How workbox-precaching Works

When a web app is loaded for the first time, workbox-precaching will look at all the assets you want to download, remove any duplicates and hook up the relevant service worker events to download and store the assets. URLs that already include versioning information (like a content hash) are used as cache keys without any further modification. URLs that don't include versioning information have an extra URL query parameter appended to their cache key representing a hash of their content that Workbox generates at build time.

workbox-precaching does all of this during the service worker's install event.

When a user later revisits your web app and you have a new service worker with different precached assets, workbox-precaching will look at the new list and determine which assets are completely new and which of the existing assets need updating, based on their revisioning. Any new assets, or updating revisions, will be added to the cache during the new service worker's install event.

This new service worker won't be used to respond to requests until its activate event has been triggered. It's in the activate event that workbox-precaching will check for any cached assets that are no longer present in the list of current URLs, and remove those from the cache.

workbox-precaching will perform these steps each time your service worker is installed and activated, ensuring the user has the latest assets, and only downloading the files that have changed.

# Serving Precached Responses

Calling precacheAndRoute() or addRoute() will create a route that matches requests for precached URLs.

The response strategy used in this route is cache-first: the precached response will be used, unless that cached response is not present (due to some unexpected error), in which case a network response will be used instead.

The order in which you call precacheAndRoute() or addRoute() is important. You would normally want to call it early on in your service worker file, before registering any additional routes with registerRoute(). If you did call registerRoute() first, and that route matched an incoming request, whatever strategy you defined in that additional route will be used to respond, instead of the cache-first strategy used by workbox-precaching.

# Explanation of the Precache List

workbox-precaching expects an array of objects with a url and revision property. This array is sometimes referred to as a precache manifest:

import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';

precacheAndRoute([
  {url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
  {url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
  {url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
  // ... other entries ...
]);

This list references a set of URLs, each with their own piece of "revisioning" information.

For the second and third object in the example above, the revision property is set to null. This is because the revisioning information is in the URL itself, which is generally a best practice for static assets.

The first object (/index.html) explicitly sets a revision property, which is an auto-generated hash of the file's contents. Unlike JavaScript and CSS resources, HTML files generally cannot include revisioning information in their URLs, otherwise links to these files on the web would break any time the content of the page changed.

By passing a revision property to precacheAndRoute(), Workbox can know when the file has changed and update it accordingly.

Workbox comes with tools to help with generating this list:

• workbox-build: This is a node package that can be used in a gulp task or as an npm run script.
• workbox-webpack-plugin: webpack users can use this plugin.
• workbox-cli: Our CLI can also be used to generate the list of assets and add them to your service worker.

# Incoming Requests for Precached Files

One thing that workbox-precaching will do out of the box is manipulate the incoming network requests to try and match precached files. This accommodates for common practices on the web.

For example, a request for / can usually be satisfied by the file at /index.html.

Below is the list of manipulations that workbox-precaching performs by default, and how you can alter that behavior.

# Ignore URL Parameters

Requests with search parameters can be altered to remove specific values, or remove all values.

By default, search parameters that start with utm_ or exactly match fbclid are removed, meaning that a request for /about.html?utm_campaign=abcd will be fulfilled with a precached entry for /about.html.

You can ignore a different set of search parameters using ignoreURLParametersMatching:

import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';

precacheAndRoute(
  [
    {url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
    {url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
    {url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
  ],
  {
    // Ignore all URL parameters.
    ignoreURLParametersMatching: [/.*/],
  }
);

# Directory Index

Requests ending in a / will, by default, be matched against entries with an index.html appended to the end. This means an incoming request for / can automatically be handled with the precached entry /index.html.

You can alter this to something else, or disable it completely, by setting directoryIndex:

import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';

precacheAndRoute(
  [
    {url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
    {url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
    {url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
  ],
  {
    directoryIndex: null,
  }
);

# Clean URLs

If a request fails to match the precache, we'll add .html to the end to support "clean" URLs (a.k.a. "pretty" URLs). This means a request like /about will be handled by the precached entry for /about.html.

You can disable this behavior by setting cleanUrls:

import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';

precacheAndRoute([{url: '/about.html', revision: 'b79cd4'}], {
  cleanUrls: false,
});

# Custom Manipulations

If you want to define custom matches from incoming requests to precached assets, you can do so with the urlManipulation option. This should be a callback that returns an array of possible matches.

import {precacheAndRoute} from 'workbox-precaching';

precacheAndRoute(
  [
    {url: '/index.html', revision: '383676'},
    {url: '/styles/app.0c9a31.css', revision: null},
    {url: '/scripts/app.0d5770.js', revision: null},
  ],
  {
    urlManipulation: ({url}) => {
      // Your logic goes here...
      return [alteredUrlOption1, alteredUrlOption2];
    },
  }
);

# Advanced Usage

# Using PrecacheController Directly

By default, workbox-precaching will set up the install and activate listeners for you. For developers familiar with service workers, this may not be desirable if you need more control.

Instead of using the default export, you can use the PrecacheController directly to add items to the precache, determine when these assets are installed, and when cleanup should occur.

import {PrecacheController} from 'workbox-precaching';

const precacheController = new PrecacheController();
precacheController.addToCacheList([
  {url: '/styles/example-1.abcd.css', revision: null},
  {url: '/styles/example-2.1234.css', revision: null},
  {url: '/scripts/example-1.abcd.js', revision: null},
  {url: '/scripts/example-2.1234.js', revision: null},
]);

precacheController.addToCacheList([{
  url: '/index.html',
  revision: 'abcd',
}, {
  url: '/about.html',
  revision: '1234',
}]);

self.addEventListener('install', (event) => {
  // Passing in event is required in Workbox v6+
  event.waitUntil(precacheController.install(event));
});

self.addEventListener('activate', (event) => {
  // Passing in event is required in Workbox v6+
  event.waitUntil(precacheController.activate(event));
});

self.addEventListener('fetch', (event) => {
  const cacheKey = precacheController.getCacheKeyForURL(event.request.url);
  event.respondWith(caches.match(cacheKey).then(...));
});

# Reading Precached Assets Directly

There are times when you might need to read a precached asset directly, outside the context of the routing that workbox-precaching can automatically perform. For instance, you might want to precache partial HTML templates that then need to be retrieved and used when constructing a full response.

In general, you can use the Cache Storage API to obtain the precached Response objects, but there is one wrinkle: the URL cache key that needs to be used when calling cache.match() might contain a versioning parameter that workbox-precaching automatically creates and maintains.

To get the correct cache key you can call getCacheKeyForURL(), passing in the original URL, and then use the result to perform a cache.match() on the appropriate cache.

import {cacheNames} from 'workbox-core';
import {getCacheKeyForURL} from 'workbox-precaching';

const cache = await caches.open(cacheNames.precache);
const response = await cache.match(getCacheKeyForURL('/precached-file.html'));

Alternatively, if all you need is the precached Response object, you can call matchPrecache(), which will automatically use the correct cache key and search in the correct cache:

import {matchPrecache} from 'workbox-precaching';

const response = await matchPrecache('/precached-file.html');

# Clean Up Old Precaches

Most releases of Workbox maintain the same format for storing precached data, and precaches created by older versions of Workbox can normally be used as-is by newer releases. Rarely, though, there is a breaking change in precaching storage that requires existing users to re-download everything, and which renders previously precached data obsolete. (Such a change happened in between the Workbox v3 and v4 releases.)

This obsolete data shouldn't interfere with normal operations, but it does contribute towards your overall storage quota usage, and it can be friendlier to your users to explicitly delete it. You can do this by adding cleanupOutdatedCaches() to your service worker, or setting cleanupOutdatedCaches: true if you're using one of Workbox's build tools to generate your service worker.

# Using Subresource Integrity

Some developers might want the added guarantees offered by subresource integrity enforcement when retrieving precached URLs from the network.

An additional, optional property called integrity can be added to any entry in the precache manifest. If provided, it will be used as the integrity value when constructing the Request used to populate the cache. If there's a mismatch, the precaching process will fail.

Determining which precache manifest entries should have integrity properties, and figuring out the appropriate values to use, is outside the scope of Workbox's build tools. Instead, developers who want to opt-in to this functionality should modify the precache manifest that Workbox generates to add in the appropriate info themselves. The manifestTransform option in Workbox's build tools configuration can help:

const ssri = require('ssri');

const integrityManifestTransform = (originalManifest, compilation) => {
  const warnings = [];
  const manifest = originalManifest.map(entry => {
    // If some criteria match:
    if (entry.url.startsWith('...')) {
      // This has to be a synchronous function call, for example:
      // compilation will be set when using workbox-webpack-plugin.
      // When using workbox-build directly, you can read the file's
      // contents from disk using, e.g., the fs module.
      const asset = compilation.getAsset(entry.url);
      entry.integrity = ssri.fromData(asset.source.source()).toString();

      // Push a message to warnings if needed.
    }
    return entry;
  });

  return {warnings, manifest};
};

// Then add manifestTransform: [integrityManifestTransform]
// to your Workbox build configuration.