Is it possible to recursively flush directories in the CQ5/AEM apache dispatcher?

Question

I have a dispatcher set up with a fairly deep stats file level due to a particular project in a multi tenancy situation.

What I'm hoping is for a way to be able to recursively flush directories to mimic a more shallow stats file level for the other tenants.

Is there a dispatcher flush command that allows me to explicitly delete a directory of content?

Answer 1

You could achieve this yourself by sending a simple GET request to your dispatcher. The path on the Dispatcher that you need to hit is /dispatcher/invalidate.cache.

The following headers ensure that it's processed correctly:

• CQ-Action: This can be set to "DELETE" to remove the content. I think "EXPIRE" also works to flag the content as out-of-date, but not remove it physically from the cache.
• CQ-Handle: This specifies what should be deleted, starting from the root of your cache folder. E.g. "/content/geometrixx", would remove geometrixx and everything under it. "/" would remove everything in the cache.
• Content-Length & Content-Type: Ensure that the request is handled correctly. As we're not sending a body, the length can be set to 0. Content-Type can be "application/octet-stream" (haven't tried other values).

The final curl command that you would build would then look something like:

curl -v \
-H "CQ-Action: DELETE" \
-H "CQ-Handle:/" \
-H "Content-Length: 0" \
-H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" \
http://localhost:80/dispatcher/invalidate.cache;

(Where this is removing everything from the cache on a Dispatcher running under localhost on port 80. This backslashes here are optional, just making it easier to read)

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You could issue this GET request from any box (subject to your firewall restrictions, etc.), for example, it could come from:

• your CI build agent
• a scheduled job in your Publish instance
• an admin component in your Author instance that takes a given path to flush.