Re: [android-developers] Does Android cache http-requested data?

FYI depending on how caching happens turning off the device won't
necessarily solve your problems.

kris

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Keith Wiley <kbwiley@gmail.com> wrote:
> Does Android cache http-requested data?
>
> I keep a small text file with various app-settings on my webserver. When my
> app launches, it sends an http request to my webserver to grab the text file
> and retrieve the settings. This enables me to update the settings of an app
> installed on a phone "in the field" from the server.
>
> The problem is, when I update the text file on the server, I usually don't
> see an immediate change in the text file retrieved by my app. It can take
> hours for the change to show up in my app's http requests. I know that the
> problem is not merely one of the file updating through various
> buffers/caches on the webserver because I can see the new version of the
> file if I load the same URL in a web browser...including a web browser on
> the exact same Android device I am running my app on...so a web browser
> (even one on the phone itself) sees the updated file immediately after I
> change it, but my app doesn't see it for several hours.
>
> It feels like Android is caching previous http request results and returning
> those to apps that make repeated requests instead of reloading the URLs from
> the web...and it takes a very long time to label this presumed cache as
> stale and reload the file from the server...several hours.
>
> On a side note, I have tried killing the app to make sure it's totally gone.
> I have even tried rebooting the phone and yet the problem still
> persists...which is mind-boggling.
>
> I am quite flummoxed. I am aware that Android is requesting and receiving a
> GZipInputStream, and I can see the input stream's type in the debugger, but
> that seems irrelevant to my issue.
>
> Here's how I pull the text file from the web server into my app. Any ideas
> why a browser on the same device successfully retrieves the updated file and
> my code doesn't?
>
> String address = "http://URL_of_text_file_on_my_webserver.txt";
> URL url = new URL(address);
> HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
> InputStream is = (InputStream) conn.getContent();
> Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8");
> StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
> char[] buffer = new char[1024];
> for (int length = 0; (length = reader.read(buffer)) > 0;)
> writer.write(buffer, 0, length);
> is.close();
> reader.close();
> writer.close();
> String fileStr = writer.toString();
>
> Thanks.
>
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