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Understanding Cache Control

In HTTP, the Cache-Control header is used to define the caching behavior of responses. It tells browsers and intermediary servers how to handle content caching. Some of the common Cache-Control directives include:
  • max-age: Specifies how long (in seconds) a response can be considered fresh.
  • no-cache: Forces caches to submit the request to the origin server for validation before serving the cached copy.
  • no-store: Prevents the storage of any part of the response by caches.
Additionally, Expires is an older header used to specify an exact expiration time for cached content. If both Cache-Control and Expires are present, Cache-Control takes precedence.Cache Control Policy To enable a restrictive cache control policy, insert the following snippet into your config.yaml file and adjust it according to your needs. 
# config.yaml

# See https://cosmo-docs.wundergraph.com/router/configuration#config-file
# for the full list of configuration options.

cache_control_policy:
  enabled: true
  value: "max-age=180, public"
  subgraphs:
    - name: "products"
      value: "max-age=60, public"
    - name: "pricing"
      value: "no-cache"

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Restrictive Cache Control Policy

The cache control policy algorithm ensures that the strictest caching policy from all subgraphs is applied when propagating the Cache-Control header (and related ones, such as Expires). This is critical for cases where different subgraphs have varying caching requirements, and you want to ensure that sensitive or time-sensitive data is properly handled.
This policy doesn’t need to be set for the entire federation, you can decide to only apply the restrictive cache control policy to a subgraph. In order to do that, just set enabled: false in your cache_control_policy configuration
The algorithm evaluates the following in order:
  1. no-cache and no-store directives take priority, and these will override any other directives.
  2. max-age values: The smallest max-age value from any subgraph (or the default, if specified in the configuration) is selected.
  3. Expires header: The earliest expiration date will be used if Expires headers are provided.
no-cache/no-store always winsWhen any subgraph returns no-cache or no-store directives, they will take precedence over all other cache settings, regardless of max-age values. This guarantees that sensitive data will not be stored in caches, providing an extra layer of security.
Mutation Requests Automatically Set no-cacheIf a global cache control policy is enabled, we will automatically set Cache-Control: no-cache to GraphQL mutation request for security reasons, ensuring that mutation results are never cached.
Requests with errors are always no-cacheIf the final response to the client has any errors, we automatically set Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate to prevent clients or caches re-serving the errored response.

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Example Scenarios:

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Scenario 1: Global Default + Subgraph Specific max-age

  • Global Default: Cache-Control: max-age=600 (10 minutes)
  • Subgraph A: Cache-Control: max-age=300 (5 minutes)
  • Subgraph B: No cache control specified
    • Result: Cache-Control: max-age=300, since Subgraph A’s max-age=300 is more restrictive than the global default.

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Scenario 2: Subgraph-Specific no-cache with Global Default

  • Global Default: Cache-Control: max-age=600
  • Subgraph A: Cache-Control: no-cache
  • Subgraph B: Cache-Control: max-age=300
    • Result: Cache-Control: no-cache overrides everything due to its strictness.

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Scenario 3: Expires in Subgraphs

  • Subgraph A: Cache-Control: max-age=300, Expires=Wed, 15 Sep 2024 18:00:00 GMT
  • Subgraph B: Cache-Control: max-age=600, Expires=Wed, 15 Sep 2024 17:00:00 GMT
    • Result: The response uses Expires=Wed, 15 Sep 2024 17:00:00 GMT, the earlier expiration time.

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Scenario 4: Combining Global Defaults with no-cache

  • Global Default: Cache-Control: max-age=600
  • Subgraph A: Cache-Control: no-store
  • Subgraph B: No cache control set
    • Result: Cache-Control: no-store takes precedence, as it’s stricter than the global default.

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Scenario 5: No global default

  • Global: enabled: true, value unset
  • Subgraph A: no cache control set
  • Subgraph B: Cache-Control: max-age=300
    • Result: Any requests which access subgraph B will have Cache-Control: max-age=300 set, but requests which don’t access subgraph B won’t have any cache-control set

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Scenario 6: With subgraph error

  • Global: Any
  • Subgraph A: Any
  • Subgraph B: Returns error response
    • Result: Any requests which access subgraph B will have an error, and thus Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate set, but requests which don’t access subgraph B won’t have any cache-control set.
By combining these mechanisms, the algorithm ensures that data handling adheres to the strictest cache control settings from all subgraph responses, promoting both security and performance integrity. Users can define global defaults to enforce a baseline cache policy, and can rely on no-cache or no-store directives for security sensitive subgraphs.

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Overriding Cache Control Policy

By using the set operation in their header propagation rules, users can overwrite the cache control policy if necessary.
For example, a configuration can be set like: 
cache_control_policy:
  enabled: true
  value: "max-age=180, public"

headers:
 subgraphs:
    specific-subgraph: # Will only affect this subgraph
      response:
        - op: "set"
          name: "Cache-Control"
          value: "max-age=5400"
For this configuration, any request which hits the specific-subgraph will have the desired subgraph cache control value set (max-age=5400).
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