304: Not modified and front end caching

Question

I am using a PHP script to serve files. I would like to be able to send back a 304 not modified header in my http response if the file has not changed since the client last downloaded it. This seems to be a feature in Apache (and most other web servers), but I have no clue how this can be implemented through PHP.

I have heard of using $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'], but this variable does not seem to appear in my $_SERVER super array.

My question is not how to return a 304 header, but how to know that one should be returned.

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Edit: The problem is that my $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] is not set. This is the content of my .htaccess file:

ExpiresActive On 
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "modification plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "modification plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/gif "modification plus 1 month"
Header append Cache-Control: "must-revalidate" 


<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond $1 !^(controller\.php)
   RewriteRule (.*\.jpg|.*\.png|.*\.gif) controller.php/$1
</IfModule>

HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE still does not appear in the $_SERVER super array.

Solution 1

This article will answer all your questions on caching

I found that adding

RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE:%{HTTP:If-Modified-Since}]
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH:%{HTTP:If-None-Match}]

To the bottom of my htaccess file (below all rewriterule) worked.

Solution 2

I had this problem and it turned out to simply be that I had Firebug open. This has an option under the Net tab "Disable Browser Cache" that is ticked by default. There is a similar option in Chrome's developer tools, one of the tick boxes on the bar under the menu bar.

Unticking these options resulted in the browser correctly sending HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE and everything working fine after all (even with Firebug or Chrome Dev Tools open).