Recently I encountered a situation in which the XML feed was being cached by the browser. Thus when the XML feed was updated my app was failing to reflect the changes.
I decided that I would pass a random foo variable over the URL string to encourage the browser to refresh. In order to do this I wanted to use a GUID (or a close approximation of the concept). A GUID for those who do not know is a reference term for “Guaranted Unique IDentifier”. Though truthfully, like most guarantee’s, it carries little weight. That said…it is fairly unlikely to generate a duplicate GUID in limited use.
In order to generate the GUID you must import the following class package:
import mx.utils.UIDUtil;
After that you simply call the class and method as seen below:
“myXMLFeed.xml?foo=” + UIDUtil.createUID();
Note, in the above example I am merely appending the returned GUID value to the end of my XML feed as the value to my parameter “foo”.
Hope you find this little bit helpful.
- The Saj
This is a nice solution, and one I haven’t thought of before. Other methods that seem to work are Math.random() and new Date().getTime().