Content Caching
Storefront Next uses a multi-tier strategy for caching content at different layers in the server architecture. First, the browser caches static content where it’s served directly to end users. Then the site eCDN (Cloudflare) caches static content for globally distributed edge caching. Finally, storefront configuration and metadata are cached in Managed Runtime (MRT) for application-level caching. As requests move downstream, the B2C Commerce layer caches metadata, while B2C Commerce API (SCAPI) caches API response data.
Static content refers to files and resources, such as JavaScript bundles, on a storefront site that are unchanged regardless of who requests them or when they’re accessed. Storefront Next delivers static content to users as-is, without personalization or server-side processing. CDNs and the browser cache static content publicly as immutable, URL-addressable resources, typically with a greater than 99% cache hit ratio.
Managed Runtime caches site and page metadata for faster page rendering.
Storefront Next performance and scalability depend heavily on web-tier caching of SCAPI responses.
SCAPI can store eligible GET responses in the web-tier cache and the content delivery network (CDN) cache. Enable page caching in Business Manager to use this implicit caching. Non-personalized response classification is a separate safety decision. See Classify Non-Personalized Responses.
Make only the necessary expansions in the request, as certain expansions have short cache entry live times. For example, unnecessarily including the “availability” expansion in requests to the Products and Product Search APIs reduces the cache hit rate drastically and negatively affects overall request performance. If no expand parameter is specified, then all expansions are selected.
For cache eligibility, time-to-live values, and cache-status headers, see SCAPI Caching in the B2C Commerce API Guide. Cache status shows how a cache handled a response. It doesn’t prove that the response is safe for all shoppers.
To support personalization, Storefront Next doesn’t cache HTML documents.