This article covers a Bloomreach Experience Manager version 12. There's an updated version available that covers our most recent release.

How to access Web Files over a stable URL without <anti-cache> value

In Using Web Files, it is explained how to create in a JSP or FTL a URL to a Web File by using the hst webfile tag, for example in FTL

<@hst.webfile var="link" path="/js/script.js" />
<script src="${link}" />

resulting in a URL in the form 

/webfiles/<anti-cache>/js/script.js

The <anti-cache> part is changed whenever a Web File is changed : Because the URL changes when a web file changes, we can serve web files to the client (browser) with an 'Expires' header of one year (aka caching 'forever').

However, when you need a stable URL to access a Web File, for example because you request originates from some NodeJs server side application that does not 'know' the <anti-cache> value but just a fixed Web File URL, this can be achieved as follows:

Web Files Stable URLs

When you want stable URLs, you need to bootstrap a sitemap item below hst:default where the name of that sitemap item replaces the <anti-cache> value in the URL. Assume you want to access the script.js file from above over the URL

/webfiles/latest/js/script.js

then you need to bootstrap a sitemap item with the name latest below hst:default/hst:configurations/hst:sitemap/webfiles using the following YAML source definition:

definitions:
  config:
    /hst:hst/hst:configurations/hst:default/hst:sitemap/webfiles/latest:
      jcr:primaryType: hst:sitemapitem
      /_any_:
        jcr:primaryType: hst:sitemapitem
        hst:relativecontentpath: ${1}

After the above addition in the repository data, a rebuild and restart should result in the following web files sitemap items:

/hst:hst:
  /hst:configurations:
    /hst:default:
      /hst:sitemap:
        /webfiles:
          /_default_ :
            /_any_:
          /latest:
            /_any_:

and you should be able to access the script.js file via

/webfiles/latest/js/script.js
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