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  Cachebrowser

Purpose

With the cachebrowser, you can check which files are (still) in the cache. You have options to view the cached objects, save them to another file, or delete them from the cache.

Opening the window

Select Cache / Cachebrowser... from the menu to open the cachebrowser window. If the cachebrowser window is already open, it will pop up to front, and will be activated.

The cache list

The list shows all cached objects. The following information is shown for each object:

URL: the Url (address) of this object.
Date: the date when it was retrieved.
Size: the size of the object in bytes.
Type: the MIME type of the object.
Charset: the character set used by the object, if any.
Etag: the Etag hash of the object, if any.
File: the file name of the object in the cache directory.

Etags: AWeb uses Etags (Entity tags) to validate objects in the cache. If, when AWeb fetches an object, a server responds with an Etag header along with the object, AWeb stores this Etag in the cache along with the object. The next time AWeb fetches the same object from the server, it sends the Etag within its request to the server.

If the object has not changed in the meanwhile (the server will know this from the Etag AWeb has just sent it), the server will respond with a "304 Not Modified" message and the object will not be resent. There is no point in resending the object if nothing has changed! If the object has changed, the server will send AWeb the modified object along with a new Etag, which AWeb will again use the next time it fetches the object.

Because Etags are a hash number calculated based on the content of the object, the Etag value will remain the same for dynamically created objects (such as php, asp, etc. documents) when their contents remain unchanged. This is an advantage over Last-Modified headers, which will always be updated for dynamic objects - despite their contents possibly remaining unchanged. This prevents objects being needlessly resent by the server.

General information

Below the list there is a fuelgauge showing how full the cache is, compared to the configured cache size.

Also the number of files and the total occupied disk space is shown.

Find

Enable the find function. This button toggles, clicking it again (or clicking the match button) disables the find function.

You can now type a search string in the entry field. After you hit Enter in the entry field, or click the Next button, the string is located in the list. Clicking the Next button again finds the next occurrence.

Match

Enable the match function. This button toggles, clicking it again (or clicking the find button) disables the match function.

You can now type a search string or pattern in the entry field. After you hit Enter in the entry field, all entries in the list matching the string or pattern become selected.

The match function supports both plain search strings and patterns. If the search string typed contains a DOS pattern matching character, it uses pattern matching against the full URLs. Otherwise a search is made for any occurrence of the search string within the URLs.

When the pattern does not contain the addressing scheme part (the part like "http://"), then the scheme part of every URL is ignored. So a pattern "foo.bar#?" matches URLs "http://foo.bar/xyz.html" and "ftp://foo.bar/zoo".

Sort by

Use the Sort by chooser to sort the entries in the list by their URL, their date (most recent will be shown first), or by their MIME type.

Open an object

If you have selected an object from the list, you can use the Open button to load the page in the current browser window. If it is an image, the external viewer for that image (as configured in the viewers settings) will be started.

Instead of the Open button, you can double click on the entry, or use the Enter key.

Save an object

If you have selected an object from the list, you can use the Save button to save the object to another file. You will see a save requester where you can enter the file name.

Delete objects

If you have selected one or more objects from the list, you can use the Delete button to delete the objects from the cache.


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