HTTP caching in Google App Engine (Python)

I wanted to add some HTTP caching in the browser on the Google App Engine, didn't see much for write ups, here is what I did

Static Content

Static content is straight forward, you can reference the following in the configuration documents: Static File Handlers. This will set the basic static content expiry, for example:

default_expiration: "1d"

This sets the default for all static content, and then per URL file handler:

- url: /static
  static_dir: static
  expiration: "1d"

This will define a per handler expiration. In my case, they are the same.

Response Caching

For any request to your application, you might want to cache that response in request handler implementation. To do so, you can add the response headers as follows:

self.response.headers["Expires"] = util.get_expiration_stamp(60)
self.response.headers["Content-Type"] = "application/json"
self.response.headers["Cache-Control: max-age"] = 60
self.response.headers["Cache-Control"] = "public"
self.response.out.write(template.render(_path, _template_values))

Note the expires implementation, this needs to be a valid date formatted string. The following is the implementation:

class GMT(datetime.tzinfo):
    def utcoffset(self, dt):
        return datetime.timedelta(hours=10) # + self.dst(dt)
    def tzname(self, dt):
        return "GMT"
    def dst(self, dt):
        return datetime.timedelta(0) 

class Util(object):
    
    def get_expiration_stamp(self,seconds):
        gmt = GMT() 
        delta = datetime.timedelta(seconds=seconds)
        expiration = self.get_current_time()
        expiration = expiration.replace(tzinfo=gmt) 
        expiration = expiration + delta
        EXPIRATION_MASK = "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z"
        
        return expiration.strftime(EXPIRATION_MASK)

See Also:

• How to best generate Date string for Expires Header..?
• app.yaml at master from twixmit/twixmit - GitHub
• main.py at master from twixmit/twixmit - GitHub