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Caching Recommendations

Learn about caching recommendations for your Drupal backend starter kit.

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Cache settings are configured out-of-the-box for you, but there are circumstances in which you might need to make your own configurations, such as when your CMS is not on Pantheon but your frontend is on Pantheon.

How it Works

You can configure your Drupal site to cache JSON:API endpoints until the underlying content changes. You can also cache these same routes on a CDN. Edge caching can improve performance for your Front-End Sites that rely on these API endpoints, and also reduce the load on your CMS in cases when a large number of API requests are made in a short period of time, such as during a full site build process.

Surrogate keys enable more flexible purging because cached responses include metadata. Surrogate keys allow you to tag responses with specific identifiers. For example, you can use the Surrogate-Key header to tag content with a key term. You can then selectively purge requests tagged with the key term.

Your CDN is forced to request a new version of your content when you purge cached content. This ensures that visitors to your site see your latest content changes.

Using the Starter Kit

The recommended caching configurations are automatically enabled if you created your Drupal site using the backend starter project, including:

  • JSON:API is configured to cache responses for 10 minutes.
  • The Pantheon Advanced Page Cache module is enabled. This enables edge caching and purging across the entire decoupled stack.

Custom Implementation

You can manually enable edge caching and purging if you did not use the Decoupled Kit backend starter project. The Edge caching instructions below focus on sites running on Pantheon, but can be adapted for other platforms.

Enable caching for JSON:API

  1. Open your Drupal Admin, select Configuration, select Development, and then select Performance.

  2. Set the Browser and proxy cache maximum age to a value greater than zero. Refer to Drupal Caching for more information.

Enable Edge Caching

  1. Run the following Composer command:

    composer require drupal/pantheon_advanced_page_cache

  2. Enable the Pantheon Advanced Page Cache module.

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