Spring: Disable caching of template and static files - spring

Question

While using Spring Boot v2.6.3, Spring v5.3.15 and Java 17.0.2,
I put the devtools dependency in pom.xml:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
<optional>true</optional>
</dependency>
In application.yml, I have this:
spring:
thymeleaf:
cache: false
cache:
type: none
devtools:
restart:
enabled: true
If I do a change (java, template or static css file), I have to rebuild the project for the new content to appear in the browser.
Is there a way to prevent Spring from caching the templates and the static files?

Answer 1

When it comes to spring-boot, by default the template options such as Thymeleaf and FreeMarker are configured to be cached. It is done in that way because the template parsing don’t need to be reparsed with every request they serve. Even that is useful in production cached templates are not so great at development time. Cached templates will still be in use until you restart the application.
DevTools addresses this issue by automatically disabling all template caching. However as you explained it didn't work for you. Therefore I suggest you remove using DevTools and use the below mentioned application property.
To disable the caching all you need to do is set a template-appropriate caching property to false. I will mention different properties for different templates for disable the caching.
FreeMarker spring.freemarker.cache
Groovy Templates spring.groovy.template.cache
Mustache spring.mustache.cache
Thymeleaf spring.thymeleaf.cache
By default, all of these properties are set to true to enable caching. You can disable caching for your chosen template engine by setting its cache property to false.
For testing purpose, just remove the spring configuration you mentioned in your question and just add the following.
spring:
thymeleaf:
cache: false
This works for me and if this doesn't work for you then if should be a different problem.