Offline

https://web.dev/offline-cookbook/ - specific to Service Workers, but defines terms that are useful generally

• Network-only
  • Always fetch the data and use it; no cache involved
  • (the easiest to implement)
• Network falling back to cache
  • Try to load the data from network and cache it
  • If network fails, and if there’s cached data, return it
  • (Traditional browser default for server-rendered pages)
• Stale-while-revalidate
  • If there’s a cached version, use it
  • Always fetch an update and store it
  • If there was not a cached version, use the updated version
  • (don’t see the update until next time)
• Cache then network
  • If there is cached data, show it
  • Make a network request. If it returns, cache it and update the data to show it
  • (The Ember Data default)

Less frequently useful

• Cache-only
  • Fetch the data initially and cache it
  • Only used the cached version; never refetch
• Cache, falling back to network
  • Upon request, if the data is cached, use it and don’t refetch
  • Otherwise, fetch, cache, and return; never refetch
  • (never allows data to be updated)
• Cache and network race
  • Try to load the data both from cache and network
  • Whichever returns with data first, use it
  • Cache what the network returns
  • (seems only useful in cases where disk access is slow)