assets_last_updated

Gumster

I've often wondered what the purpose of this (assets_last_updated) Assets config key is. I can see the strtotime() version of it is appended to the cache file, but how does this alter cache behaviour over and above the md5() name? Is it intended to be dynamic (eg one could set it to be a week in advance of "now")? Or is it a way of "versioning" assets? How was it intended to be used?

admin

It was simply a manual way to break browser caches for asset files (not the local optimized cache files). It gets appended to the end of the URL and makes it unique so the browser will no longer cache it (to avoid telling the client to clear their cache because they aren't seeing something).

Gumster

So how do you guys use it? Would you "release" new assets files by specifying a new date? I'm right in thinking that the use of a date format here is sort of irrelevant (excepting that it's a unique string format, so useful to trigger browser refreshes of assets)? That is it doesn't matter what the date is, as long as it is different from a previous "release"?

It's going to be useful to me in any case!

admin

That is correct... it can be any string really.