Updates are not visible without a page refresh

Issue

• After editing and publishing a fragment or page, the changes are not immediately visible, but a similar behavior could be reproduced in other ways.
• A manual page refresh is required to see the updated content.

Environment

• Liferay DXP 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4
• Quarterly Releases

Resolution

• This issue can occur when the Single Page Application (SPA) Cache Expiration Time is set to 0 (no expiration) or a higher value. 
  • This setting can be found in the Control Panel under Configuration > System Settings > Security Tools > Single Page Application.
• To resolve this, set the SPA Cache Expiration Time to -1. This disables SPA caching and ensures that changes are reflected immediately after publishing. Here's how different settings affect page behavior:
  • SPA Cache Expiration Time = -1 (SPA caching disabled, by default):
    • Pages and resources are loaded dynamically via JavaScript.
    • Changes are reflected immediately.
    • This is the recommended setting to avoid cache issues.
  • SPA Cache Expiration Time = 0 or greater (SPA caching enabled):
    • Pages and resources are loaded via JavaScript, but previously accessed links are cached.
    • This improves performance but can confuse users, as the content they view is cached rather than the latest fresh content.
  • SPA Cache Expiration Time disabled:
    • The browser requests a full page reload for every link, disabling the performance benefits of SPA but avoids any kind of caching issues.
    • To disable SPA completely, set the property javascript.single.page.application.enabled=false in your portal-ext.properties file and restart the server.
  • It would also be necessary to review any web server, CDN, proxy, firewall or web cache serving Liferay that could be manipulating headers or caching resources.

Additional Information

• Automatic Single-Page Applications
• Working with Liferay Single Page Application
• Configuring SPA System Settings
• Disabling SPA