Client Caching -- Was: Re: Network Abuse by Netscape?
ts (decoux@moulon.inra.fr)
Mon, 31 Oct 1994 08:46:14 +0100
> Chimera uses the MD5 signature of the URL truncated at 14 characters
> as the cache filename. Someone else gave me the idea and at the
> time I was worried about weird characters ending up in
> filenames so it seemed like a good idea.
>
> Using MD5 may sound like overkill but it was really simple to do and I
> have yet to see a cache name collision (as far as I know) and noone has
> complained. It seems fast enough. I also figured that MD5 will end
> up in the code anyways to be used for one of the authentication schemes.
>
> Chimera limits the size of the cache (default 4MB). It removes
> the least recently accessed cache files when space is needed and if a
> cache file is old (over 4 hours...a number I pulled out of thin air)
> then chimera will retrieve the document from the source. This is
> bogus but it is good enough. I read someplace that someone was using:
>
> life_time_of_the_document = current_time - last_change_time
>
> This seems like a good idea. How is it handled by emacs-w3 and Arena?
>
> Chimera also puts MIME fields at the top of the cache file to provide
> information about the contents.
It's a good idea to cache document, but warning some documents are
protected : don't store these documents in the cache with a mode "644"
Also, I like give an "username/password" when I access a protected
document for the first time, even if the document is in the cache.
Guy Decoux