Clearing the cache

How to see/test changes made to a form

Internet browsers are optimised for speed and consequently have various processes to increase the speed at which pages are loaded. One of these is holding a cache of the state that a web page was previously loaded to be able to load it quicker the next time you go to the web site.

The backend code for the forms also caches form content for the same reason and usually when you make changes to the form and publish them, this is handled automatically. However, there are some changes which may require a manual clearing of a browser or server-side cache in order to see your latest changes.

Changes to Branding / Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

.css files are commonly cached by modern browsers so if you have made a change to the content of your selected branding file you may need to clear your browser cache to see the change. This is different from clearing the server-side cache as discussed next.

There are a couple of different ways to clear your browser cache

• On a desktop/laptop type Shift + F5 or Ctrl + Shift + r to get a fresh copy of the webpage and ignore cached content

• Open the form in an ‘Incognito’ window

If, however you have selected for a form to use a different stylesheet altogether, you will need to clear the server-side cache because the name of which stylesheet to use is stored in a global eGovHub setting.

Clearing the Server cache because of editing a setting or resource in eGovHub Management.

If you edit a setting or resource in eGovHub Management, you are changing it in the database and the cache is not automatically updated. As such you need to clear it so that the new value is retrieved when the form is loaded up and there are a few different ways to do this.

Global Settings/Resources

If you have edited a global setting or resource that could be used by all forms then in the Framework tab under Shared framework, click ‘Clear’ under Development Environment and on the next page click ‘Clear in-memory’

If you have many V2 product forms this may take a little while because each form has its own cache. Also, if that form has not been used in a while it will have been unloaded from the server memory to optimise resource usage.

Form Settings/Resources

If you have changed a setting or resource for a specific form only then you can do the above, or you can just clear the cache for that form. For example, if it is a change to the Integrated Bulky Waste Collection form, again go to the Framework tab but this time look in the Framework sites table for BulkyWasteCollection (Integrated) in the Development environment and click the Clear cache button in this row.