Edgio

Purging

This guide covers how you can purge data from the Edgio edge cache.

Overview

Edgio offers three ways to purge responses from the cache:
  • Developer Console
  • CLI
  • REST API

Developer Console

You can purge the cache via the Edgio Developer Console by navigating to an environment, selecting the Caching tab, and clicking Purge the Cache under Cache Purge History:
purge_the_cache_button
You can choose to purge all entries, purge by path, or by surrogate keys. You can also save multiple paths in a group if you purge them together regularly:
purge_dialog

CLI

To purge responses via the CLI, see the CLI reference.

REST API

To purge responses via the REST API, see the REST API reference.

Deployments

By default, all response are purged from the cache when you deploy a new version of your site. You can override this behavior using the Preserve cache between deployments setting in your environment configuration:
preserve_cache
Caution: While preserving the cache between deployments can greatly reduce the load on your origin following a deployment, it can also lead to inconsistent behavior if the new version of your browser code receives an old, incompatible API response from the cache. Before enabling this feature, we recommend adding an API version number to your URL scheme to ensure that breaking changes to your API don’t affect your website’s functionality when old responses are served from the cache.

Static prerendering after clearing the cache

If you have [static prerendering] enabled, the cache will automatically be repopulated when you clear all entries from the cache (such as when you select Purge all entries in the Edgio Developer Console or run 0 cache-clear without providing --path or --surrogate-key). You can view the prerendering progress by clicking on the active deployment for the environment that was cleared.

Surrogate Keys (Cache Tags)

Efficient cache purging is an essential part of keeping your website fast and reducing the load on your origin servers. Purging all entries from the cache all may increase your website’s load time while the cache repopulates. If you purge all entries from the cache more than once a week, consider using surrogate keys for more targeted purging.
Surrogate keys, also known as cache tags, are unique identifiers that you assign to groups of responses. They allow you to selectively purge related content. You can assign one or more surrogate keys to a response by sending an x-0-surrogate-key header in the response. Multiple keys should be separated by spaces.
For example:
1HTTP/1.1 200 OK
2x-0-surrogate-key: product.123 shoes all-products
3Content-Type: text/html
In the example above you could purge this response from the cache using any of the surrogate keys. For example, to purge via the CLI:
Bash
1layer0 cache-clear --team=my-team --site=my-site --environment=production --surrogate-key=product.123
or
Bash
1layer0 cache-clear --team=my-team --site=my-site --environment=production --surrogate-key=shoes

Automated Purging

Here are some ways that you can automate cache purging:

NPM Scripts

Here is an example script you can add to your package.json to handle cache clearing for each environment. You can also configure scripts to clear by surrogate key, path, or group (As defined in Edgio Console)
These scripts assume that you have created environments called “production”, “staging”, and “development and you have created a deploy key for your site and added it as a secret in your repo called “layer0_deploy_token”.
JavaScript
1"scripts": {
2 ...
3 "clearcache:dev": "0 cache-clear --team=myTeam --site=myEdgioApp --environment=development --token=$layer0_deploy_token",
4 "clearcache:stage": "0 cache-clear --team=myTeam --site=myEdgioApp --environment=staging --token=$layer0_deploy_token",
5 "clearcache:prod": "0 cache-clear --team=myTeam --site=myEdgioApp --environment=production --token=$layer0_deploy_token",
6 "clearcache:prod:pdps": "0 cache-clear --team=myTeam --site=myEdgioApp --environment=production --surrogate-key=pdp --token=$layer0_deploy_token",
7 "clearcache:prod:plps": "0 cache-clear --team=myTeam --site=myEdgioApp --environment=production --surrogate-key=plp --token=$layer0_deploy_token",
8 ...
9 },

GitHub Actions

Here is an example GitHub action that clears the cache at a scheduled time using the jobs defined in your package.json
YAML
1# Add this file to your project at .github/workflows/clear-cache.yml
2#
3# This GitHub action clears the sites PRODUCTION cache at 09:15AM UTC every day.
4#
5# The schedule syntax is standard cron syntax
6# minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week
7# * * * * *
8#
9# 1.) This example depends on a script being defined in your package.json called clearcache:prod
10#
11# In order for this action to clear your cache, you must create a deploy token from the site settings page
12# in https://app.layer0.co and configure it as a secret called "layer0_deploy_token" in your repo on GitHub.
13
14name: Clear PRODUCTION cache at 5am
15on:
16 schedule:
17 - cron: '15 9 * * *'
18jobs:
19 clear-the-cache:
20 runs-on: ubuntu-latest
21 steps:
22 - name: Extract branch name
23 shell: bash
24 run: echo "BRANCH_NAME=$(echo ${GITHUB_REF#refs/heads/} | sed 's/\//_/g')" >> $GITHUB_ENV
25 - uses: actions/checkout@v1
26 - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
27 with:
28 node-version: 16
29 registry-url: https://npm-proxy.fury.io/layer0/
30 - name: Cache node modules
31 uses: actions/cache@v1
32 env:
33 cache-name: cache-node-modules
34 with:
35 path: ~/.npm # npm cache files are stored in `~/.npm` on Linux/macOS
36 key: ${{ runner.os }}-build-${{ env.cache-name }}-${{ hashFiles('**/package-lock.json') }}
37 restore-keys: |
38 ${{ runner.os }}-build-${{ env.cache-name }}-
39 ${{ runner.os }}-build-
40 ${{ runner.os }}-
41 - run: npm ci
42 - name: Clear cache in production
43 run: npm run clearcache:prod
44 env:
45 layer0_deploy_token: ${{secrets.layer0_deploy_token}}