Refresh a proxy cache with Curl

2015-03-31 | Martin Hoppenheit | 1 min read

If you try to download a file with Curl but keep getting wrong data there may be a web proxy getting in your way that holds an outdated version of the file in its cache.

To verify this take a look at the header data involved in your request:

$ curl --verbose http://example.net/foo

If the output contains a line like

X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from proxy.example.org

the proxy proxy.example.org probably holds an old version of the requested file in its cache. You can tell the proxy to refresh its cache by including a Cache-Control header with Curl’s -H (or --header) flag:

$ curl --verbose -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' http://example.net/foo

If it works you will get the current version of the file. The output will probably contain two lines like these, telling you that the proxy has indeed refreshed its cache:

X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from proxy.example.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from proxy.example.org