[Developers] New Application Developer Tips in Help Center

[Ben Drees]

Hi Phil,

The two cache-related notes are somewhat out-of-date:

'Use an empty write to refresh cache'
'How to avoid caching problems when using the API'

The recommended way to avoid unwanted cache hits is to GET or POST 
(empty) to /api/service/touch.  That's what the "Refresh cache" link in 
the 'Dev Tools' bar does.  This new entry point (as of several months 
ago) was created so that its purpose would be limited and unambiguous.  
The GET request method is permitted (in addition to POST) due to reports 
that some versions of Flash quietly convert empty POSTs to GETs.

A cookie-aware user agent is guaranteed not to receive any response 
placed in cache prior to its most recent invocation of 
/api/service/touch.  The details of the underlying caching mechanism are 
described in <http://blog.freebase.com/2008/01/22/caching-dynamic-content/>.

The standard cache-suppressing HTTP request headers 'Cache-Control: 
max-age=0', 'Cache-Control: no-cache', and 'Pragma: no-cache' also work, 
although their use is discouraged.

-Ben

Phil Gochenour wrote:
> Hey everybody,
>
> I've created a new topic in the Help Center called Application 
> Developer Tips to serve as an index page for those topics that have, 
> up until now, been typed as Freebase Tips. I plan on launching into 
> some major work on the Help documentation for the developer audience 
> in the next few days and weeks, but this is a first attempt at pulling 
> together some material that you all might not have been aware of. I 
> created a new tip to cover the question of retrieving Wikipedia URLs 
> for objects with a GUID, if you all have any other tips you'd like to 
> contribute please email them to me - as soon as I have the IA for the 
> Help Center under control, along with the new Help Topic type, you all 
> can add your tips directly to the Help Center, but, until then, just 
> send them directly to me.
>
> Phil
> The Docs Doc
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