gulp-appcache

gulp-manifest

Generate HTML5 Cache Manifest files. Submitted by Scott Hillman.

Editing

Many thanks to Scott Hillman who developed grunt-manifest for gulpjs. I made few changes in the plugin to support the relative path of the file which are to be cahched.

Big thanks to Gunther Brunner for writing the grunt-manifest plugin. This plugin was heavily influenced by his great work.

Visit the HTML 5 Guide to AppCache for more information on Cache Manifest files.

Usage

npm install gulp-appcache

API

Parameters

manifest(options)

This controls how this task (and its helpers) operate and should contain key:value pairs, see options below.

options.relativePath

Type: String

Adds the relative path to the file to be caches with hash working as previous.

options.filename

Type: String
Default: "app.manifest"

Set name of the Cache Manifest file.

options.cache

It is not supported in this plugin as the hash does not change with in manifest file.

options.exclude

Type: String Array
Default: undefined

Exclude specific files from the Cache Manifest file.

options.network

Type: String Array
Default: "*" (By default, an online whitelist wildcard flag is added)

Adds a string to the NETWORK section.

See here for more information.

options.fallback

Type: String Array
Default: undefined

Adds a string to the FALLBACK section.

See here for more information.

options.preferOnline

Type: Boolean
Default: undefined

Adds a string to the SETTINGS section, specifically the cache mode flag of the prefer-online state.

See here for more information.

options.timestamp

Type: Boolean
Default: true

Adds a timestamp as a comment for easy versioning.

Note: timestamp will invalidate application cache whenever cache manifest is rebuilt, even if contents of files in src have not changed.

options.hash

Type: Boolean Default: false

Adds a sha256 hash of all src files (actual contents) as a comment.

This will ensure that application cache invalidates whenever actual file contents change (it's recommented to set timestamp to false when hash is used).

Usage Example

gulp.task('manifest', function(){
  gulp.src(['../client/resources/build/**/*'])
    .pipe(manifest({
  relativePath: '/resources/build'
      hash: true,
      preferOnline: true,
      network: ['http://*', 'https://*', '*'],
      filename: 'app.manifest',
      exclude: 'app.manifest'
     }))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('build'));
});

Output example

CACHE MANIFEST

CACHE:
/resources/build/js/app.js
/resources/build/css/style
/resources/build/css/style.css
/resources/build/js/zepto.min.js
/resources/build/js/script.js
/resources/build/some_files/index.html
/resources/build/some_files/about.html

NETWORK:
http://*
https://*
*

# hash: 76f0ef591f999871e1dbdf6d5064d1276d80846feeef6b556f74ad87b44ca16a

You do need to be fully aware of standard browser caching. If the files in CACHE are in the network cache, they won't actually update, since the network cache will spit back the same file to the application cache. Therefore, it's recommended to add a hash to the filenames's, akin to rails or yeoman. See here why query strings are not recommended.