Preload JS, but don't run it

Preload JS, but don't run it - javascript

I want to preload a large JS file after a page has loaded, so that when I link to that JS file on the required page it is already downloaded and cached.
I'm basically doing this at the moment, and it works, but of course it's not the right way:
preload_js = new Image();
preload_js = "http://domain.com/files/file.js";
This seems such a quick and simple method, no Ajax needed etc. and it works great.
What's the proper way to do this? Surely not with Ajax as that seems overkill for this.
I know there's lots of methods for loading JS but they all seem to actually run the code after the script has loaded, which I don't want.
I don't want to use jQuery (or any library), it must be plain JS. Thanks for any help.

From this blog post:
Preloading components in advance is good for performance. There are
several ways to do it. But even the cleanest solution (open up an
iframe and go crazy there) comes at a price - the price of the iframe
and the price of parsing and executing the preloaded CSS and
JavaScript. There's also a relatively high risk of potential
JavaScript errors if the script you preload assumes it's loaded in a
page different than the one that preloads.
After a bit of trial and lot of error I think I came up with something
that could work cross-browser:
in IE use new Image().src to preload all component types
in all other browsers use a dynamic <object> tag
In this example I assume the page prefetches after onload some
components that will be needed by the next page. The components are a
CSS, a JS and a PNG (sprite).
window.onload = function () {
var i = 0,
max = 0,
o = null,
// list of stuff to preload
preload = [
'http://tools.w3clubs.com/pagr2/<?php echo $id; ?>.sleep.expires.png',
'http://tools.w3clubs.com/pagr2/<?php echo $id; ?>.sleep.expires.js',
'http://tools.w3clubs.com/pagr2/<?php echo $id; ?>.sleep.expires.css'
],
isIE = navigator.appName.indexOf('Microsoft') === 0;
for (i = 0, max = preload.length; i < max; i += 1) {
if (isIE) {
new Image().src = preload[i];
continue;
}
o = document.createElement('object');
o.data = preload[i];
// IE stuff, otherwise 0x0 is OK
//o.width = 1;
//o.height = 1;
//o.style.visibility = "hidden";
//o.type = "text/plain"; // IE
o.width = 0;
o.height = 0;
// only FF appends to the head
// all others require body
document.body.appendChild(o);
}
};
See the post for more details.
EDIT: Looking at the comments on that post, someone mentions this link, which talks about the problems with the new Image() preload method in IE and other browsers. Here's an excerpt:
When IE encounters an IMG tag, it creates an image object and assigns
the download request to it. As data arrives from the image download,
it’s fed into the browser's image decoders. The decoders will reject
data as malformed if you feed them plaintext, which seems reasonable,
since they can't possibly make use of such data. When the decoders
reject the data as "Not possibly an image," the image object will
abort its processing. As a part of that abort, if the download has not
yet completed, it too is aborted.
This explains the behavior mentioned by the OP in the comment below (IE9 only downloading 4KB of the file).
It seems like your only reliable cross-browser option may be to use Ajax...

USE
window.document.onload =function(){
preload_js = "http://domain.com/files/file.js";
}
window.document.onload make sure the java script will not run until you dom is ready

Considering the cross domain issues with Ajax, especially since there really is no way to load a file on a server you have no control over (e.g. Google CDN hosting jQuery), this is my solution:
(1) Use the document.createElement('object') part in Simon M's solution for Firefox as that works great.
(2) Use the new Image.src thing for every other browser. Opera, Safari and Chrome love it. Also, I mentioned earlier that Mobile Safari doesn't work. Well it does, but for some reason takes 100ms verifying something (it is properly cached and it isn't just returning a 304 not modified). I can live with 100ms.
I've not tested other mobile browsers.
(3) Bollocks to IE as nothing works.

Related

does window.location.reload(true) clear cache of asynchronous loaded resources? [duplicate]

How do I clear a browsers cache with JavaScript?
We deployed the latest JavaScript code but we are unable to get the latest JavaScript code.
Editorial Note: This question is semi-duplicated in the following places, and the answer in the first of the following questions is probably the best. This accepted answer is no longer the ideal solution.
How to force browser to reload cached CSS/JS files?
How can I force clients to refresh JavaScript files?
Dynamically reload local Javascript source / json data

Update: See location.reload() has no parameter for background on this nonstandard parameter and how Firefox is likely the only modern browser with support.
You can call window.location.reload(true) to reload the current page. It will ignore any cached items and retrieve new copies of the page, css, images, JavaScript, etc from the server. This doesn't clear the whole cache, but has the effect of clearing the cache for the page you are on.
However, your best strategy is to version the path or filename as mentioned in various other answers. In addition, see Revving Filenames: don’t use querystring for reasons not to use ?v=n as your versioning scheme.

You can't clear the cache with javascript.
A common way is to append the revision number or last updated timestamp to the file, like this:
myscript.123.js
or
myscript.js?updated=1234567890

Try changing the JavaScript file's src? From this:
<script language="JavaScript" src="js/myscript.js"></script>
To this:
<script language="JavaScript" src="js/myscript.js?n=1"></script>
This method should force your browser to load a new copy of the JS file.

Other than caching every hour, or every week, you may cache according to file data.
Example (in PHP):
<script src="js/my_script.js?v=<?=md5_file('js/my_script.js')?>"></script>
or even use file modification time:
<script src="js/my_script.js?v=<?=filemtime('js/my_script.js')?>"></script>

You can also force the code to be reloaded every hour, like this, in PHP :
<?php
echo '<script language="JavaScript" src="js/myscript.js?token='.date('YmdH').'">';
?>
or
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/myscript.js?v=<?php echo date('YmdHis'); ?>"></script>

window.location.reload(true) seems to have been deprecated by the HTML5 standard. One way to do this without using query strings is to use the Clear-Site-Data header, which seems to being standardized.

put this at the end of your template :
var scripts = document.getElementsByTagName('script');
var torefreshs = ['myscript.js', 'myscript2.js'] ; // list of js to be refresh
var key = 1; // change this key every time you want force a refresh
for(var i=0;i<scripts.length;i++){
for(var j=0;j<torefreshs.length;j++){
if(scripts[i].src && (scripts[i].src.indexOf(torefreshs[j]) > -1)){
new_src = scripts[i].src.replace(torefreshs[j],torefreshs[j] + 'k=' + key );
scripts[i].src = new_src; // change src in order to refresh js
}
}
}

try using this
<script language="JavaScript" src="js/myscript.js"></script>
To this:
<script language="JavaScript" src="js/myscript.js?n=1"></script>

Here's a snippet of what I'm using for my latest project.
From the controller:
if ( IS_DEV ) {
$this->view->cacheBust = microtime(true);
} else {
$this->view->cacheBust = file_exists($versionFile)
// The version file exists, encode it
? urlencode( file_get_contents($versionFile) )
// Use today's year and week number to still have caching and busting
: date("YW");
}
From the view:
<script type="text/javascript" src="/javascript/somefile.js?v=<?= $this->cacheBust; ?>"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/layout.css?v=<?= $this->cacheBust; ?>">
Our publishing process generates a file with the revision number of the current build. This works by URL encoding that file and using that as a cache buster. As a fail-over, if that file doesn't exist, the year and week number are used so that caching still works, and it will be refreshed at least once a week.
Also, this provides cache busting for every page load while in the development environment so that developers don't have to worry with clearing the cache for any resources (javascript, css, ajax calls, etc).

or you can just read js file by server with file_get_contets and then put in echo in the header the js contents

Maybe "clearing cache" is not as easy as it should be. Instead of clearing cache on my browsers, I realized that "touching" the file will actually change the date of the source file cached on the server (Tested on Edge, Chrome and Firefox) and most browsers will automatically download the most current fresh copy of whats on your server (code, graphics any multimedia too). I suggest you just copy the most current scripts on the server and "do the touch thing" solution before your program runs, so it will change the date of all your problem files to a most current date and time, then it downloads a fresh copy to your browser:
<?php
touch('/www/control/file1.js');
touch('/www/control/file2.js');
touch('/www/control/file2.js');
?>
...the rest of your program...
It took me some time to resolve this issue (as many browsers act differently to different commands, but they all check time of files and compare to your downloaded copy in your browser, if different date and time, will do the refresh), If you can't go the supposed right way, there is always another usable and better solution to it. Best Regards and happy camping.

I had some troubles with the code suggested by yboussard. The inner j loop didn't work. Here is the modified code that I use with success.
function reloadScripts(toRefreshList/* list of js to be refresh */, key /* change this key every time you want force a refresh */) {
var scripts = document.getElementsByTagName('script');
for(var i = 0; i < scripts.length; i++) {
var aScript = scripts[i];
for(var j = 0; j < toRefreshList.length; j++) {
var toRefresh = toRefreshList[j];
if(aScript.src && (aScript.src.indexOf(toRefresh) > -1)) {
new_src = aScript.src.replace(toRefresh, toRefresh + '?k=' + key);
// console.log('Force refresh on cached script files. From: ' + aScript.src + ' to ' + new_src)
aScript.src = new_src;
}
}
}
}

If you are using php can do:
<script src="js/myscript.js?rev=<?php echo time();?>"
type="text/javascript"></script>

Please do not give incorrect information.
Cache api is a diferent type of cache from http cache
HTTP cache is fired when the server sends the correct headers, you can't access with javasvipt.
Cache api in the other hand is fired when you want, it is usefull when working with service worker so you can intersect request and answer it from this type of cache
see:ilustration 1 ilustration 2 course
You could use these techiques to have always a fresh content on your users:
Use location.reload(true) this does not work for me, so I wouldn't recomend it.
Use Cache api in order to save into the cache and intersect the
request with service worker, be carefull with this one because
if the server has sent the cache headers for the files you want
to refresh, the browser will answer from the HTTP cache first, and if it does not find it, then it will go to the network, so you could end up with and old file
Change the url from you stactics files, my recomendation is you should name it with the change of your files content, I use md5 and then convert it to string and url friendly, and the md5 will change with the content of the file, there you can freely send HTTP cache headers long enough
I would recomend the third one see

You can also disable browser caching with meta HTML tags just put html tags in the head section to avoid the web page to be cached while you are coding/testing and when you are done you can remove the meta tags.
(in the head section)
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" />
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0"/>
Refresh your page after pasting this in the head and should refresh the new javascript code too.
This link will give you other options if you need them
http://cristian.sulea.net/blog/disable-browser-caching-with-meta-html-tags/
or you can just create a button like so
<button type="button" onclick="location.reload(true)">Refresh</button>
it refreshes and avoid caching but it will be there on your page till you finish testing, then you can take it off. Fist option is best I thing.

I tend to version my framework then apply the version number to script and style paths
<cfset fw.version = '001' />
<script src="/scripts/#fw.version#/foo.js"/>

Cache.delete() can be used for new chrome, firefox and opera.

I found a solution to this problem recently. In my case, I was trying to update an html element using javascript; I had been using XHR to update text based on data retrieved from a GET request. Although the XHR request happened frequently, the cached HTML data remained frustratingly the same.
Recently, I discovered a cache busting method in the fetch api. The fetch api replaces XHR, and it is super simple to use. Here's an example:
async function updateHTMLElement(t) {
let res = await fetch(url, {cache: "no-store"});
if(res.ok){
let myTxt = await res.text();
document.getElementById('myElement').innerHTML = myTxt;
}
}
Notice that {cache: "no-store"} argument? This causes the browser to bust the cache for that element, so that new data gets loaded properly. My goodness, this was a godsend for me. I hope this is helpful for you, too.
Tangentially, to bust the cache for an image that gets updated on the server side, but keeps the same src attribute, the simplest and oldest method is to simply use Date.now(), and append that number as a url variable to the src attribute for that image. This works reliably for images, but not for HTML elements. But between these two techniques, you can update any info you need to now :-)

Most of the right answers are already mentioned in this topic. However I want to add link to the one article which is the best one I was able to read.
https://www.fastly.com/blog/clearing-cache-browser
As far as I can see the most suitable solution is:
POST in an iframe. Next is a small subtract from the suggested post:
=============
const ifr = document.createElement('iframe');
ifr.name = ifr.id = 'ifr_'+Date.now();
document.body.appendChild(ifr);
const form = document.createElement('form');
form.method = "POST";
form.target = ifr.name;
form.action = ‘/thing/stuck/in/cache’;
document.body.appendChild(form);
form.submit();
There’s a few obvious side effects: this will create a browser history entry, and is subject to the same issues of non-caching of the response. But it escapes the preflight requirements that exist for fetch, and since it’s a navigation, browsers that split caches will be clearing the right one.
This one almost nails it. Firefox will hold on to the stuck object for cross-origin resources but only for subsequent fetches. Every browser will invalidate the navigation cache for the object, both for same and cross origin resources.
==============================
We tried many things but that one works pretty well. The only issue is there you need to be able to bring this script somehow to end user page so you are able to reset cache. We were lucky in our particular case.

window.parent.caches.delete("call")
close and open the browser after executing the code in console.

Cause browser cache same link, you should add a random number end of the url.
new Date().getTime() generate a different number.
Just add new Date().getTime() end of link as like
call
'https://stackoverflow.com/questions.php?' + new Date().getTime()
Output: https://stackoverflow.com/questions.php?1571737901173

I've solved this issue by using
ETag
Etags are similar to fingerprints, and if the resource at a given URL changes, a new Etag value must be generated. A comparison of them can determine whether two representations of a resource are the same.

Ref: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Cache/delete
Cache.delete()
Method
Syntax:
cache.delete(request, {options}).then(function(found) {
// your cache entry has been deleted if found
});

Making insecure images sources secure client-side

I let users on my VanillaForums forum choose whether or not to use the https protocol and I want to test if I can change image sources on the client's side using jQuery.
I want this code to change the protocol in the image source links to // instead of http:// and load before the images have loaded, so I used .ready():
$(document).ready(function () {
if (window.location.protocol == "https:") {
var $imgs = $("img");
$imgs.each(function () {
var img_src = $(this).prop("src");
if (img_src.indexOf("http://") < 0) return;
var new_img_src = img_src.replace("http:", "");
$(this).prop("src", new_img_src);
});
}
});
While it does work in changing the image sources, the URL bar still shows this:
And the console gives a warning that http://someimageurl... is not secure.
Do I need to move the code to the top of the page or will that not make a difference?

It needs to be done server side for the browser not to throw an insecure connection warning. The file with the responsible code is /library/core/functions.render.php, which you can see here.
$PhotoURL is the variable that needs to be changed. Using the following makes sure all images are loaded over the https: protocol: str_replace('http://', 'https://', $PhotoURL).
I usually don't mind global scope on smaller software but in something as big as Vanilla it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
I couldn't find any other fixes for Vanilla in particular so I hope this helps people.

image is not getting changed on ajax success [duplicate]

I am accessing a link on my site that will provide a new image each time it is accessed.
The issue I am running into is that if I try to load the image in the background and then update the one on the page, the image doesn't change--though it is updated when I reload the page.
var newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg";
function updateImage()
{
if(newImage.complete) {
document.getElementById("theText").src = newImage.src;
newImage = new Image();
number++;
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image/id/image.jpg?time=" + new Date();
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}
Headers as FireFox sees them:
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Expires: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 14:19:41 GMT
Server: Microsoft-HTTPAPI/1.0
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:06:04 GMT
I need to force a refresh of just that image on the page. Any ideas?

Try adding a cachebreaker at the end of the url:
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg?" + new Date().getTime();
This will append the current timestamp automatically when you are creating the image, and it will make the browser look again for the image instead of retrieving the one in the cache.

I've seen a lot of variation in answers for how to do this, so I thought I'd summarize them here (plus add a 4th method of my own invention):
(1) Add a unique cache-busting query parameter to the URL, such as:
newImage.src = "image.jpg?t=" + new Date().getTime();
Pros: 100% reliable, quick & easy to understand and implement.
Cons: Bypasses caching altogether, meaning unnecessary delays and bandwidth use whenever the image doesn't change between views. Will potentially fill browser cache (and any intermediate caches) with many, many copies of exactly the same image! Also, requires modifying image URL.
When to use: Use when image is constantly changing, such as for a live webcam feed. If you use this method, make sure to serve the images themselves with Cache-control: no-cache HTTP headers!!! (Often this can be set up using a .htaccess file). Otherwise you'll be progressively filling caches up with old versions of the image!
(2) Add query parameter to the URL that changes only when the file does, e.g.:
echo '<img src="image.jpg?m=' . filemtime('image.jpg') . '">';
(That's PHP server-side code, but the important point here is just that a ?m=[file last-modified time] querystring is appended to the filename).
Pros: 100% reliable, quick & easy to understand and implement, and preserves caching advantages perfectly.
Cons: Requires modifying the image URL. Also, a little more work for the server - it has to get access to the file-last-modified time. Also, requires server-side information, so not suitable for a purely client-side-only solution to check for a refreshed image.
When to use: When you want to cache images, but may need to update them at the server end from time to time without changing the filename itself. AND when you can easily ensure that the correct querystring is added to every image instance in your HTML.
(3) Serve your images with the header Cache-control: max-age=0, must-revalidate, and add a unique memcache-busting fragment identifier to the URL, such as:
newImage.src = "image.jpg#" + new Date().getTime();
The idea here is that the cache-control header puts images in the browser cache, but immediately markes them stale, so that and every time they are re-displayed the browser must check with the server to see if they've changed. This ensures that the browser's HTTP cache always returns the latest copy of the image. However, browsers will often re-use an in-memory copy of an image if they have one, and not even check their HTTP cache in that case. To prevent this, a fragment identifier is used: Comparison of in-memory image src's includes the fragment identifier, but it gets stripped of before querying the HTTP cache. (So, e.g., image.jpg#A and image.jpg#B might both be displayed from the image.jpg entry in the browser's HTTP cache, but image.jpg#B would never be displayed using in-memory retained image data from when image.jpg#A was last displayed).
Pros: Makes proper use of HTTP caching mechanisms, and uses cached images if they haven't changed. Works for servers that choke on a querystring added to a static image URL (since servers never see fragment identifiers - they're for the browsers' own use only).
Cons: Relies on somewhat dubious (or at least poorly documented) behaviour of browsers, in regard to images with fragment identifiers in their URLs (However, I've tested this successfully in FF27, Chrome33, and IE11). Does still send a revalidation request to the server for every image view, which may be overkill if images only change rarely and/or latency is a big issue (since you need to wait for the revalidation response even when the cached image is still good). Requires modifying image URLs.
When to use: Use when images may change frequently, or need to be refreshed intermittently by the client without server-side script involvement, but where you still want the advantage of caching. For example, polling a live webcam that updates an image irregularly every few minutes. Alternatively, use instead of (1) or (2) if your server doesn't allow querystrings on static image URLs.
[EDIT 2021: No longer works on recent Chrome & Edge: The internal memcache in those browsers now ignores fragment identifiers (maybe since the switch to the Blink engine?). But see method (4) below, it's now MUCH easier on those two browsers specifically, so consider combining this method with a simplified version of (4) to cover those two browsers].
(4) Forcibly refresh a particular image using Javascript, by first loading it into a hidden <iframe> and then calling location.reload(true) on the iframe's contentWindow.
The steps are:
Load the image to be refreshed into a hidden iframe. [EDIT 2021: For Chrome and Edge, load a HTML page with an <img> tag, not the raw image file]. This is just a setup step - it can be done long in advance the actual refresh, if desired. It doesn't even matter if the image fails to load at this stage!
[EDIT 2021: This step is now unnecessary in recent Chrome and Edge]. Once that's done, blank out all copies of that image on your page(s) or anywhere in any DOM nodes (even off-page ones stored in javascript variables). This is necessary because the browser may otherwise display the image from a stale in-memory copy (IE11 especially does this): You need to ensure all in-memory copies are cleared, before refreshing the HTTP cache. If other javascript code is running asynchronously, you may also need to prevent that code from creating new copies of the to-be-refreshed image in the meantime.
Call iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true). The true forces a cache bypass, reloading directly from the server and overwriting the existing cached copy.
[EDIT 2021: This step is now unnecessary in recent Chrome and Edge - on those browsers, existing images will just automatically update themselves after the previous step!] Once it's finished re-loading, restore the blanked images. They should now display the fresh version from the server!
For same-domain images, you can load the image into the iframe directly. [EDIT 2021: Not on Chrome, Edge]. For cross-domain images, you have to instead load a HTML page from your domain that contains the image in an <img> tag, otherwise you'll get an "Access Denied" error when trying to call iframe.contentWindow.reload(...). [Do this for Chrome & Edge also].
Pros: Works just like the image.reload() function you wish the DOM had! Allows images to by cached normally (even with in-the-future expiry dates if you want them, thus avoiding frequent revalidation). Allows you to refresh a particular image without altering the URLs for that image on the current page, or on any other pages, using only client-side code.
Cons: Relies on Javascript. Not 100% guaranteed to work properly in every browser (I've tested this successfully in FF27, Chrome33, and IE11 though). Very complicated relative to the other methods. [EDIT 2021: Unless you only need recent Chrome & Edge support, in which case it's very much simpler].
When to use: When you have a collection of basically static images that you'd like cached, but you still need to be able to update them occasionally and get immediate visual feedback that the update took place. (Especially when just refreshing the whole browser page wouldn't work, as in some web apps built on AJAX for example). And when methods (1)-(3) aren't feasible because (for whatever reason) you can't change all the URLs that might potentially display the image you need to have updated. (Note that using those 3 methods the image will be refreshed, but if another page then tries to displays that image without the appropriate querystring or fragment identifier, it may show an older version instead).
The details of implementing this in a fairy robust and flexible manner are given below:
Let's assume your website contains a blank 1x1 pixel .gif at the URL path /img/1x1blank.gif, and also has the following one-line PHP script (only required for applying forced refresh to cross-domain images, and can be rewritten in any server-side scripting language, of course) at the URL path /echoimg.php:
<img src="<?=htmlspecialchars(#$_GET['src'],ENT_COMPAT|ENT_HTML5,'UTF-8')?>">
Then, here's a realistic implementation of how you might do all this in Javascript. It looks a bit complicated, but there's a lot of comments, and the important function is just forceImgReload() - the first two just blank and un-blank images, and should be designed to work efficiently with your own HTML, so code them as works best for you; much of the complications in them may be unnecessary for your website:
// This function should blank all images that have a matching src, by changing their src property to /img/1x1blank.gif.
// ##### You should code the actual contents of this function according to your page design, and what images there are on them!!! #####
// Optionally it may return an array (or other collection or data structure) of those images affected.
// This can be used by imgReloadRestore() to restore them later, if that's an efficient way of doing it (otherwise, you don't need to return anything).
// NOTE that the src argument here is just passed on from forceImgReload(), and MAY be a relative URI;
// However, be aware that if you're reading the src property of an <img> DOM object, you'll always get back a fully-qualified URI,
// even if the src attribute was a relative one in the original HTML. So watch out if trying to compare the two!
// NOTE that if your page design makes it more efficient to obtain (say) an image id or list of ids (of identical images) *first*, and only then get the image src,
// you can pass this id or list data to forceImgReload() along with (or instead of) a src argument: just add an extra or replacement parameter for this information to
// this function, to imgReloadRestore(), to forceImgReload(), and to the anonymous function returned by forceImgReload() (and make it overwrite the earlier parameter variable from forceImgReload() if truthy), as appropriate.
function imgReloadBlank(src)
{
// ##### Everything here is provisional on the way the pages are designed, and what images they contain; what follows is for example purposes only!
// ##### For really simple pages containing just a single image that's always the one being refreshed, this function could be as simple as just the one line:
// ##### document.getElementById("myImage").src = "/img/1x1blank.gif";
var blankList = [],
fullSrc = /* Fully qualified (absolute) src - i.e. prepend protocol, server/domain, and path if not present in src */,
imgs, img, i;
for each (/* window accessible from this one, i.e. this window, and child frames/iframes, the parent window, anything opened via window.open(), and anything recursively reachable from there */)
{
// get list of matching images:
imgs = theWindow.document.body.getElementsByTagName("img");
for (i = imgs.length; i--;) if ((img = imgs[i]).src===fullSrc) // could instead use body.querySelectorAll(), to check both tag name and src attribute, which would probably be more efficient, where supported
{
img.src = "/img/1x1blank.gif"; // blank them
blankList.push(img); // optionally, save list of blanked images to make restoring easy later on
}
}
for each (/* img DOM node held only by javascript, for example in any image-caching script */) if (img.src===fullSrc)
{
img.src = "/img/1x1blank.gif"; // do the same as for on-page images!
blankList.push(img);
}
// ##### If necessary, do something here that tells all accessible windows not to create any *new* images with src===fullSrc, until further notice,
// ##### (or perhaps to create them initially blank instead and add them to blankList).
// ##### For example, you might have (say) a global object window.top.blankedSrces as a propery of your topmost window, initially set = {}. Then you could do:
// #####
// ##### var bs = window.top.blankedSrces;
// ##### if (bs.hasOwnProperty(src)) bs[src]++; else bs[src] = 1;
// #####
// ##### And before creating a new image using javascript, you'd first ensure that (blankedSrces.hasOwnProperty(src)) was false...
// ##### Note that incrementing a counter here rather than just setting a flag allows for the possibility that multiple forced-reloads of the same image are underway at once, or are overlapping.
return blankList; // optional - only if using blankList for restoring back the blanked images! This just gets passed in to imgReloadRestore(), it isn't used otherwise.
}
// This function restores all blanked images, that were blanked out by imgReloadBlank(src) for the matching src argument.
// ##### You should code the actual contents of this function according to your page design, and what images there are on them, as well as how/if images are dimensioned, etc!!! #####
function imgReloadRestore(src,blankList,imgDim,loadError);
{
// ##### Everything here is provisional on the way the pages are designed, and what images they contain; what follows is for example purposes only!
// ##### For really simple pages containing just a single image that's always the one being refreshed, this function could be as simple as just the one line:
// ##### document.getElementById("myImage").src = src;
// ##### if in imgReloadBlank() you did something to tell all accessible windows not to create any *new* images with src===fullSrc until further notice, retract that setting now!
// ##### For example, if you used the global object window.top.blankedSrces as described there, then you could do:
// #####
// ##### var bs = window.top.blankedSrces;
// ##### if (bs.hasOwnProperty(src)&&--bs[src]) return; else delete bs[src]; // return here means don't restore until ALL forced reloads complete.
var i, img, width = imgDim&&imgDim[0], height = imgDim&&imgDim[1];
if (width) width += "px";
if (height) height += "px";
if (loadError) {/* If you want, do something about an image that couldn't load, e.g: src = "/img/brokenImg.jpg"; or alert("Couldn't refresh image from server!"); */}
// If you saved & returned blankList in imgReloadBlank(), you can just use this to restore:
for (i = blankList.length; i--;)
{
(img = blankList[i]).src = src;
if (width) img.style.width = width;
if (height) img.style.height = height;
}
}
// Force an image to be reloaded from the server, bypassing/refreshing the cache.
// due to limitations of the browser API, this actually requires TWO load attempts - an initial load into a hidden iframe, and then a call to iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
// If image is from a different domain (i.e. cross-domain restrictions are in effect, you must set isCrossDomain = true, or the script will crash!
// imgDim is a 2-element array containing the image x and y dimensions, or it may be omitted or null; it can be used to set a new image size at the same time the image is updated, if applicable.
// if "twostage" is true, the first load will occur immediately, and the return value will be a function
// that takes a boolean parameter (true to proceed with the 2nd load (including the blank-and-reload procedure), false to cancel) and an optional updated imgDim.
// This allows you to do the first load early... for example during an upload (to the server) of the image you want to (then) refresh.
function forceImgReload(src, isCrossDomain, imgDim, twostage)
{
var blankList, step = 0, // step: 0 - started initial load, 1 - wait before proceeding (twostage mode only), 2 - started forced reload, 3 - cancelled
iframe = window.document.createElement("iframe"), // Hidden iframe, in which to perform the load+reload.
loadCallback = function(e) // Callback function, called after iframe load+reload completes (or fails).
{ // Will be called TWICE unless twostage-mode process is cancelled. (Once after load, once after reload).
if (!step) // initial load just completed. Note that it doesn't actually matter if this load succeeded or not!
{
if (twostage) step = 1; // wait for twostage-mode proceed or cancel; don't do anything else just yet
else { step = 2; blankList = imgReloadBlank(src); iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true); } // initiate forced-reload
}
else if (step===2) // forced re-load is done
{
imgReloadRestore(src,blankList,imgDim,(e||window.event).type==="error"); // last parameter checks whether loadCallback was called from the "load" or the "error" event.
if (iframe.parentNode) iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
}
}
iframe.style.display = "none";
window.parent.document.body.appendChild(iframe); // NOTE: if this is done AFTER setting src, Firefox MAY fail to fire the load event!
iframe.addEventListener("load",loadCallback,false);
iframe.addEventListener("error",loadCallback,false);
iframe.src = (isCrossDomain ? "/echoimg.php?src="+encodeURIComponent(src) : src); // If src is cross-domain, script will crash unless we embed the image in a same-domain html page (using server-side script)!!!
return (twostage
? function(proceed,dim)
{
if (!twostage) return;
twostage = false;
if (proceed)
{
imgDim = (dim||imgDim); // overwrite imgDim passed in to forceImgReload() - just in case you know the correct img dimensions now, but didn't when forceImgReload() was called.
if (step===1) { step = 2; blankList = imgReloadBlank(src); iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true); }
}
else
{
step = 3;
if (iframe.contentWindow.stop) iframe.contentWindow.stop();
if (iframe.parentNode) iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
}
}
: null);
}
Then, to force a refresh of an image located on the same domain as your page, you can just do:
forceImgReload("myimage.jpg");
To refresh an image from somewhere else (cross-domain):
forceImgReload("http://someother.server.com/someimage.jpg", true);
A more advanced application might be to reload an image after uploading a new version to your server, preparing the initial stage of the reload process simultaneous with the upload, to minimize the visible reload delay to the user. If you're doing the upload via AJAX, and the server is returning a very simple JSON array [success, width, height] then your code might look something like this:
// fileForm is a reference to the form that has a the <input typ="file"> on it, for uploading.
// serverURL is the url at which the uploaded image will be accessible from, once uploaded.
// The response from uploadImageToServer.php is a JSON array [success, width, height]. (A boolean and two ints).
function uploadAndRefreshCache(fileForm, serverURL)
{
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(),
proceedWithImageRefresh = forceImgReload(serverURL, false, null, true);
xhr.addEventListener("load", function(){ var arr = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText); if (!(arr&&arr[0])) { proceedWithImageRefresh(false); doSomethingOnUploadFailure(...); } else { proceedWithImageRefresh(true,[arr[1],ar[2]]); doSomethingOnUploadSuccess(...); }});
xhr.addEventListener("error", function(){ proceedWithImageRefresh(false); doSomethingOnUploadError(...); });
xhr.addEventListener("abort", function(){ proceedWithImageRefresh(false); doSomethingOnUploadAborted(...); });
// add additional event listener(s) to track upload progress for graphical progress bar, etc...
xhr.open("post","uploadImageToServer.php");
xhr.send(new FormData(fileForm));
}
A final note: Although this topic is about images, it potentially applies to other kinds of files or resources also. For example, preventing the use of stale script or css files, or perhaps even refreshing updated PDF documents (using (4) only if set up to open in-browser). Method (4) might require some changes to the above javascript, in these cases.

As an alternative to...
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg?" + new Date().getTime();
...it seems that...
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg#" + new Date().getTime();
...is sufficient to fool the browser cache without bypassing any upstream caches, assuming you returned the correct Cache-Control headers. Although you can use...
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
...you lose the benefits of the If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match headers, so something like...
Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate
...should prevent the browser from re-downloading the entire image if it hasn't actually changed. Tested and working on IE, Firefox, and Chrome. Annoyingly it fails on Safari unless you use...
Cache-Control: no-store
...although this still may be preferable to filling upstream caches with hundreds of identical images, particularly when they're running on your own server. ;-)
Update (2014-09-28): Nowadays it looks like Cache-Control: no-store is needed for Chrome as well.

2021 ANSWER: You can simply use fetch with the cache option set to 'reload' to update the cache:
fetch("my-image-url.jpg", {cache: 'reload', mode: 'no-cors'})
The following function will update the cache and reload your image everywhere in your page:
async function reloadImg(url) {
await fetch(url, { cache: 'reload', mode: 'no-cors' })
document.body.querySelectorAll(`img[src='${url}']`)
.forEach(img => img.src = url)
}
It returns a promise so you can use it like await reloadImg("my-image-url.jpg") if you wish.
Nowadays the fetch API is available almost everywhere (except on IE, of course).

After creating the new image, are you removing the old image from the DOM and replacing it with the new one?
You could be grabbing new images every updateImage call, but not adding them to the page.
There are a number of ways to do it. Something like this would work.
function updateImage()
{
var image = document.getElementById("theText");
if(image.complete) {
var new_image = new Image();
//set up the new image
new_image.id = "theText";
new_image.src = image.src;
// insert new image and remove old
image.parentNode.insertBefore(new_image,image);
image.parentNode.removeChild(image);
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}
After getting that working, if there are still problems it is probably a caching issue like the other answers talk about.

<img src='someurl.com/someimage.ext' onload='imageRefresh(this, 1000);'>
Then below in some javascript
<script language='javascript'>
function imageRefresh(img, timeout) {
setTimeout(function() {
var d = new Date;
var http = img.src;
if (http.indexOf("&d=") != -1) { http = http.split("&d=")[0]; }
img.src = http + '&d=' + d.getTime();
}, timeout);
}
</script>
And so what this does is, when the image loads, schedules it to be reloaded in 1 second. I'm using this on a page with home security cameras of varying type.

I had a requirement: 1) can't add any ?var=xx to the image 2) it should work cross-domain
I really like the #4 option in this answer with one but:
it has problems working with crossdomain reliably (and it requires touching the server code).
My quick and dirty way is:
Create hidden iframe
Load the current page to it (yeah the whole page)
iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
Re-set the image source to itself
Here it is
function RefreshCachedImage() {
if (window.self !== window.top) return; //prevent recursion
var $img = $("#MYIMAGE");
var src = $img.attr("src");
var iframe = document.createElement("iframe");
iframe.style.display = "none";
window.parent.document.body.appendChild(iframe);
iframe.src = window.location.href;
setTimeout(function () {
iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
setTimeout(function () {
$img.removeAttr("src").attr("src", src);
}, 2000);
}, 2000);
}
Yeah, I know, setTimeout... You have to change that to proper onload-events.

One answer is to hackishly add some get query parameter like has been suggested.
A better answer is to emit a couple of extra options in your HTTP header.
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 14:19:41 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
By providing a date in the past, it won't be cached by the browser. Cache-Control was added in HTTP/1.1 and the must-revalidate tag indicates that proxies should never serve up an old image even under extenuating circumstances, and the Pragma: no-cache isn't really necessary for current modern browsers/caches but may help with some crufty broken old implementations.

What I ended up doing was having the server map any request for an image at that directory to the source that I was trying to update. I then had my timer append a number onto the end of the name so the DOM would see it as a new image and load it.
E.g.
http://localhost/image.jpg
//and
http://localhost/image01.jpg
will request the same image generation code but it will look like different images to the browser.
var newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg";
var count = 0;
function updateImage()
{
if(newImage.complete) {
document.getElementById("theText").src = newImage.src;
newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image/id/image" + count++ + ".jpg";
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}

function reloadImage(imageId)
{
path = '../showImage.php?cache='; //for example
imageObject = document.getElementById(imageId);
imageObject.src = path + (new Date()).getTime();
}
<img src='../showImage.php' id='myimage' />
<br/>
<input type='button' onclick="reloadImage('myimage')" />

This answer is based on several of the above answers but unifies and simplifies them a little and casts the answer as a JavaScript function.
function refreshCachedImage(img_id) {
var img = document.getElementById(img_id);
img.src = img.src; // trick browser into reload
};
I needed a solution to the problem of animated SVGs not restarting after they played through the first time.
This trick also works on other media like audio and video as well.

document.getElementById("img-id").src = document.getElementById("img-id").src
set its own src as its src.

I had this same issue using the Unsplash random image feature. The idea of adding a dummy query string to the end of the URL is correct, but in this instance a completely random parameter doesn't work (I tried it). I can imagine it's the same for some other services too, but for unsplash the parameter needs to be sig, so your image URL would be, for example, http://example.net/image.jpg?sig=RANDOM where random is a random string that will NOT be the same when you update it. I used Math.random()*100 but date is suitable too.
You need to do the above because without it, the browser will see that the image at said path has already been loaded, and will use that cached image to speed up loading.
See https://github.com/unsplash/unsplash-source-js/issues/9

Place a second copy of the image in the same spot, then remove the original image.
function refreshImg(ele){
ele.insertAdjacentHTML('beforebegin',ele.outerHTML);
ele.parentNode.removeChild(ele);
}
This will effectively refresh the image.
Crossbrowser too. insertAdjacentHTML, outerHTML, parentNode, and removeChild are all crossbrowser.
Performance wise, performance loss will most likely be negligible in most cases. #Paolo Bergantino's answer is probably better than this function. Only one DOM element is affected using his answer. Two elements with this function.

Try using a worthless querystring to make it a unique url:
function updateImage()
{
if(newImage.complete) {
document.getElementById("theText").src = newImage.src;
newImage = new Image();
number++;
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg?" + new Date();
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}

Heavily based on Doin's #4 code, the below example simplifies that code a great bit utilising document.write instead of src in the iframe to support CORS. Also only focuses on busting the browser cache, not reloading every image on the page.
Below is written in typescript and uses the angular $q promise library, just fyi, but should be easy enough to port to vanilla javascript. Method is meant to live inside a typescript class.
Returns a promise that will be resolved when the iframe has completed reloading. Not heavily tested, but works well for us.
mmForceImgReload(src: string): ng.IPromise<void> {
var deferred = $q.defer<void>();
var iframe = window.document.createElement("iframe");
var firstLoad = true;
var loadCallback = (e) => {
if (firstLoad) {
firstLoad = false;
iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
} else {
if (iframe.parentNode) iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
deferred.resolve();
}
}
iframe.style.display = "none";
window.parent.document.body.appendChild(iframe);
iframe.addEventListener("load", loadCallback, false);
iframe.addEventListener("error", loadCallback, false);
var doc = iframe.contentWindow.document;
doc.open();
doc.write('<html><head><title></title></head><body><img src="' + src + '"></body></html>');
doc.close();
return deferred.promise;
}

I improved the script from AlexMA for showing my webcam on a web page wich periodically uploads a new image with the same name. I had issues that sometimes the image was flickering because of a broken image or not complete (up)loaded image. To prevent flickering I check the natural height of the image because the size of my webcam image did not change. Only if the loaded image height fits the original image height the full image will be shown on page.
<h3>Webcam</h3>
<p align="center">
<img id="webcam" title="Webcam" onload="updateImage();" src="https://www.your-domain.com/webcam/current.jpg" alt="webcam image" width="900" border="0" />
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
// off-screen image to preload next image
var newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "https://www.your-domain.com/webcam/current.jpg";
// remember the image height to prevent showing broken images
var height = newImage.naturalHeight;
function updateImage()
{
// for sure if the first image was a broken image
if(newImage.naturalHeight > height)
{
height = newImage.naturalHeight;
}
// off-screen image loaded and the image was not broken
if(newImage.complete && newImage.naturalHeight == height)
{
// show the preloaded image on page
document.getElementById("webcam").src = newImage.src;
}
// preload next image with cachebreaker
newImage.src = "https://www.your-domain.com/webcam/current.jpg?time=" + new Date().getTime();
// refresh image (set the refresh interval to half of webcam refresh,
// in my case the webcam refreshes every 5 seconds)
setTimeout(updateImage, 2500);
}
</script>
</p>

I solved this problem by sending the data back through a servlet.
response.setContentType("image/png");
response.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache");
response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache, must-revalidate");
response.setDateHeader("Expires", 0);
BufferedImage img = ImageIO.read(new File(imageFileName));
ImageIO.write(img, "png", response.getOutputStream());
Then from the page you just give it the servlet with some params to grab the correct image file.
<img src="YourServlet?imageFileName=imageNum1">

Here's my solution. It's very simple. The frame scheduling could be better.
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Image Refresh</title>
</head>
<body>
<!-- Get the initial image. -->
<img id="frame" src="frame.jpg">
<script>
// Use an off-screen image to load the next frame.
var img = new Image();
// When it is loaded...
img.addEventListener("load", function() {
// Set the on-screen image to the same source. This should be instant because
// it is already loaded.
document.getElementById("frame").src = img.src;
// Schedule loading the next frame.
setTimeout(function() {
img.src = "frame.jpg?" + (new Date).getTime();
}, 1000/15); // 15 FPS (more or less)
})
// Start the loading process.
img.src = "frame.jpg?" + (new Date).getTime();
</script>
</body>
</html>

The following code is useful to refresh image when a button is clicked.
function reloadImage(imageId) {
imgName = 'vishnu.jpg'; //for example
imageObject = document.getElementById(imageId);
imageObject.src = imgName;
}
<img src='vishnu.jpg' id='myimage' />
<input type='button' onclick="reloadImage('myimage')" />

No need for new Date().getTime() shenanigans. You can trick the browser by having an invisible dummy image and using jQuery .load(), then creating a new image each time:
<img src="" id="dummy", style="display:none;" /> <!-- dummy img -->
<div id="pic"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var url = whatever;
// You can repeat the following as often as you like with the same url
$("#dummy").load(url);
var image = new Image();
image.src = url;
$("#pic").html("").append(image);
</script>

Simple solution: add this header to the response:
Cache-control: no-store
Why this works is clearly explained at this authoritative page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Cache-Control
It also explains why no-cache does not work.
Other answers do not work because:
Caching.delete is about a new cache that you may create for off-line work, see: https://web.dev/cache-api-quick-guide/
Fragments using a # in the URL do not work because the # tells the browser to not send a request to the server.
A cache-buster with a random part added to the url works, but will also fill the browser cache. In my app, I wanted to download a 5 MB picture every few seconds from a web cam. It will take just an hour or less to completely freeze your pc. I still don't know why the browser cache is not limited to a reasonable max, but this is definitely a disadvantage.

I used the below concept of first binding the image with a false(buffer) url and next binding it with the valid url.
imgcover.ImageUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["profileLargeImgPath"] + "Myapp_CoverPic_" + userid + "Buffer.jpg";
imgcover.ImageUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["profileLargeImgPath"] + "Myapp_CoverPic_" + userid + ".jpg";
This way, I am forcing the browser to refresh with valid url.

how to receive XML in IE8 with mootools

I'm doing a web where I heavily use AJAX requests to
a XML service. In fact, my web is a front-end with almost
no server whatsoever and uses AJAX to communicate with
the back-end.
Everything was going fine (I developed and tested in Ubuntu 9.04
and Firefox 3.0 as a browser).
One day I decided to see how my web did in IE8...
horror!
Nothing was working as it marvelously did in Firefox.
To be more specific, the Request.HTML's were not working.
As I said, my web relied heavily on that, so nothing worked.
I spent a day trying to get something running but I had no luck..
The only conclusion to which I arrived was that the XML was
incorrectly parsed
(I hope I'm in mistake). Let's get to the code:
var req = new Request.HTML({
url: 'service/Catalog.groovy',
onSuccess: function(responseTree, responseElements) {
var catz = responseElements.filter('category');
catz.each(function(cat){
// cat = $(cat);
var cat_id = cat.get('id');
var subcategory = cat.getElement('subcategory');
alert(cat_id);
alert(cat.get('html'));
alert(subcategory.get('html'));
}
},
onFailure: function(){...}
});
for example, that piece of code.
In firefox, it worked perfectly. It alerted an ID (for example, 7),
then it showed the contents of the category element, for example:
<subcategory id='1'>
<category_id>7</category_id>
<code>ACTIO</code>
<name>Action</name>
</subcategory>
and then it showed the contents of some inner element, in this case:
<category_id>7</category_id>
<code>ACTIO</code>
<name>Action</name>
In IE8, the first alert worked OK (alerted 7)
but the next alert (alert(cat.get('html'));) gave an empty string
and the last threw an Exception... it said something about subcategory
beeing null.
What I concluded with this all is that the elements where parsed
correctly
in Firefox, but in IE8 I only got the tags and the attributes OK,
everything else
was completely wrong (in fact, missing). I mean, the inner content of
all the
elements of the response where gone!
Other fact you could use: this code:
alert(cat.get('tag')); resulted in
Firefox: category
IE8: /category <-----------(?)
hmm what else...
oh yeah... the line you see commented above (cat = $(cat);) was
something
I tried to do to fix this. I read in the mootools Docs that IE needed
to explicitly call
the $ function on elements to get all the Element-magic ... but this
didn't fix anything.
I was so desperate... I even fiddled around with mootools.js code
OK, so...
What I want you, dear mootool-pro's is to help me solve this problem,
for I REALLY need the web to function in IE8, and in fact I chose
mootools to forget about compatibility problems...
ps: if something is not clear, please ASK! I'd appreciate any help :D

I had a similar issue like this sometime ago using jQuery. The problem was that, in IE, the incoming response data needed to be handled by the Microsoft.XMLDOM ActiveX object.
The general steps are to:
Instantiate the ActiveX object.
var oXmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");
Pass it the incoming response data and load it.
oXmlDoc.loadXML(sXmlResponseData);
Parse it as needed.
You can check out the full resolution here.

Refresh image with a new one at the same url

I am accessing a link on my site that will provide a new image each time it is accessed.
The issue I am running into is that if I try to load the image in the background and then update the one on the page, the image doesn't change--though it is updated when I reload the page.
var newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg";
function updateImage()
{
if(newImage.complete) {
document.getElementById("theText").src = newImage.src;
newImage = new Image();
number++;
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image/id/image.jpg?time=" + new Date();
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}
Headers as FireFox sees them:
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Expires: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 14:19:41 GMT
Server: Microsoft-HTTPAPI/1.0
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:06:04 GMT
I need to force a refresh of just that image on the page. Any ideas?

Try adding a cachebreaker at the end of the url:
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg?" + new Date().getTime();
This will append the current timestamp automatically when you are creating the image, and it will make the browser look again for the image instead of retrieving the one in the cache.

I've seen a lot of variation in answers for how to do this, so I thought I'd summarize them here (plus add a 4th method of my own invention):
(1) Add a unique cache-busting query parameter to the URL, such as:
newImage.src = "image.jpg?t=" + new Date().getTime();
Pros: 100% reliable, quick & easy to understand and implement.
Cons: Bypasses caching altogether, meaning unnecessary delays and bandwidth use whenever the image doesn't change between views. Will potentially fill browser cache (and any intermediate caches) with many, many copies of exactly the same image! Also, requires modifying image URL.
When to use: Use when image is constantly changing, such as for a live webcam feed. If you use this method, make sure to serve the images themselves with Cache-control: no-cache HTTP headers!!! (Often this can be set up using a .htaccess file). Otherwise you'll be progressively filling caches up with old versions of the image!
(2) Add query parameter to the URL that changes only when the file does, e.g.:
echo '<img src="image.jpg?m=' . filemtime('image.jpg') . '">';
(That's PHP server-side code, but the important point here is just that a ?m=[file last-modified time] querystring is appended to the filename).
Pros: 100% reliable, quick & easy to understand and implement, and preserves caching advantages perfectly.
Cons: Requires modifying the image URL. Also, a little more work for the server - it has to get access to the file-last-modified time. Also, requires server-side information, so not suitable for a purely client-side-only solution to check for a refreshed image.
When to use: When you want to cache images, but may need to update them at the server end from time to time without changing the filename itself. AND when you can easily ensure that the correct querystring is added to every image instance in your HTML.
(3) Serve your images with the header Cache-control: max-age=0, must-revalidate, and add a unique memcache-busting fragment identifier to the URL, such as:
newImage.src = "image.jpg#" + new Date().getTime();
The idea here is that the cache-control header puts images in the browser cache, but immediately markes them stale, so that and every time they are re-displayed the browser must check with the server to see if they've changed. This ensures that the browser's HTTP cache always returns the latest copy of the image. However, browsers will often re-use an in-memory copy of an image if they have one, and not even check their HTTP cache in that case. To prevent this, a fragment identifier is used: Comparison of in-memory image src's includes the fragment identifier, but it gets stripped of before querying the HTTP cache. (So, e.g., image.jpg#A and image.jpg#B might both be displayed from the image.jpg entry in the browser's HTTP cache, but image.jpg#B would never be displayed using in-memory retained image data from when image.jpg#A was last displayed).
Pros: Makes proper use of HTTP caching mechanisms, and uses cached images if they haven't changed. Works for servers that choke on a querystring added to a static image URL (since servers never see fragment identifiers - they're for the browsers' own use only).
Cons: Relies on somewhat dubious (or at least poorly documented) behaviour of browsers, in regard to images with fragment identifiers in their URLs (However, I've tested this successfully in FF27, Chrome33, and IE11). Does still send a revalidation request to the server for every image view, which may be overkill if images only change rarely and/or latency is a big issue (since you need to wait for the revalidation response even when the cached image is still good). Requires modifying image URLs.
When to use: Use when images may change frequently, or need to be refreshed intermittently by the client without server-side script involvement, but where you still want the advantage of caching. For example, polling a live webcam that updates an image irregularly every few minutes. Alternatively, use instead of (1) or (2) if your server doesn't allow querystrings on static image URLs.
[EDIT 2021: No longer works on recent Chrome & Edge: The internal memcache in those browsers now ignores fragment identifiers (maybe since the switch to the Blink engine?). But see method (4) below, it's now MUCH easier on those two browsers specifically, so consider combining this method with a simplified version of (4) to cover those two browsers].
(4) Forcibly refresh a particular image using Javascript, by first loading it into a hidden <iframe> and then calling location.reload(true) on the iframe's contentWindow.
The steps are:
Load the image to be refreshed into a hidden iframe. [EDIT 2021: For Chrome and Edge, load a HTML page with an <img> tag, not the raw image file]. This is just a setup step - it can be done long in advance the actual refresh, if desired. It doesn't even matter if the image fails to load at this stage!
[EDIT 2021: This step is now unnecessary in recent Chrome and Edge]. Once that's done, blank out all copies of that image on your page(s) or anywhere in any DOM nodes (even off-page ones stored in javascript variables). This is necessary because the browser may otherwise display the image from a stale in-memory copy (IE11 especially does this): You need to ensure all in-memory copies are cleared, before refreshing the HTTP cache. If other javascript code is running asynchronously, you may also need to prevent that code from creating new copies of the to-be-refreshed image in the meantime.
Call iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true). The true forces a cache bypass, reloading directly from the server and overwriting the existing cached copy.
[EDIT 2021: This step is now unnecessary in recent Chrome and Edge - on those browsers, existing images will just automatically update themselves after the previous step!] Once it's finished re-loading, restore the blanked images. They should now display the fresh version from the server!
For same-domain images, you can load the image into the iframe directly. [EDIT 2021: Not on Chrome, Edge]. For cross-domain images, you have to instead load a HTML page from your domain that contains the image in an <img> tag, otherwise you'll get an "Access Denied" error when trying to call iframe.contentWindow.reload(...). [Do this for Chrome & Edge also].
Pros: Works just like the image.reload() function you wish the DOM had! Allows images to by cached normally (even with in-the-future expiry dates if you want them, thus avoiding frequent revalidation). Allows you to refresh a particular image without altering the URLs for that image on the current page, or on any other pages, using only client-side code.
Cons: Relies on Javascript. Not 100% guaranteed to work properly in every browser (I've tested this successfully in FF27, Chrome33, and IE11 though). Very complicated relative to the other methods. [EDIT 2021: Unless you only need recent Chrome & Edge support, in which case it's very much simpler].
When to use: When you have a collection of basically static images that you'd like cached, but you still need to be able to update them occasionally and get immediate visual feedback that the update took place. (Especially when just refreshing the whole browser page wouldn't work, as in some web apps built on AJAX for example). And when methods (1)-(3) aren't feasible because (for whatever reason) you can't change all the URLs that might potentially display the image you need to have updated. (Note that using those 3 methods the image will be refreshed, but if another page then tries to displays that image without the appropriate querystring or fragment identifier, it may show an older version instead).
The details of implementing this in a fairy robust and flexible manner are given below:
Let's assume your website contains a blank 1x1 pixel .gif at the URL path /img/1x1blank.gif, and also has the following one-line PHP script (only required for applying forced refresh to cross-domain images, and can be rewritten in any server-side scripting language, of course) at the URL path /echoimg.php:
<img src="<?=htmlspecialchars(#$_GET['src'],ENT_COMPAT|ENT_HTML5,'UTF-8')?>">
Then, here's a realistic implementation of how you might do all this in Javascript. It looks a bit complicated, but there's a lot of comments, and the important function is just forceImgReload() - the first two just blank and un-blank images, and should be designed to work efficiently with your own HTML, so code them as works best for you; much of the complications in them may be unnecessary for your website:
// This function should blank all images that have a matching src, by changing their src property to /img/1x1blank.gif.
// ##### You should code the actual contents of this function according to your page design, and what images there are on them!!! #####
// Optionally it may return an array (or other collection or data structure) of those images affected.
// This can be used by imgReloadRestore() to restore them later, if that's an efficient way of doing it (otherwise, you don't need to return anything).
// NOTE that the src argument here is just passed on from forceImgReload(), and MAY be a relative URI;
// However, be aware that if you're reading the src property of an <img> DOM object, you'll always get back a fully-qualified URI,
// even if the src attribute was a relative one in the original HTML. So watch out if trying to compare the two!
// NOTE that if your page design makes it more efficient to obtain (say) an image id or list of ids (of identical images) *first*, and only then get the image src,
// you can pass this id or list data to forceImgReload() along with (or instead of) a src argument: just add an extra or replacement parameter for this information to
// this function, to imgReloadRestore(), to forceImgReload(), and to the anonymous function returned by forceImgReload() (and make it overwrite the earlier parameter variable from forceImgReload() if truthy), as appropriate.
function imgReloadBlank(src)
{
// ##### Everything here is provisional on the way the pages are designed, and what images they contain; what follows is for example purposes only!
// ##### For really simple pages containing just a single image that's always the one being refreshed, this function could be as simple as just the one line:
// ##### document.getElementById("myImage").src = "/img/1x1blank.gif";
var blankList = [],
fullSrc = /* Fully qualified (absolute) src - i.e. prepend protocol, server/domain, and path if not present in src */,
imgs, img, i;
for each (/* window accessible from this one, i.e. this window, and child frames/iframes, the parent window, anything opened via window.open(), and anything recursively reachable from there */)
{
// get list of matching images:
imgs = theWindow.document.body.getElementsByTagName("img");
for (i = imgs.length; i--;) if ((img = imgs[i]).src===fullSrc) // could instead use body.querySelectorAll(), to check both tag name and src attribute, which would probably be more efficient, where supported
{
img.src = "/img/1x1blank.gif"; // blank them
blankList.push(img); // optionally, save list of blanked images to make restoring easy later on
}
}
for each (/* img DOM node held only by javascript, for example in any image-caching script */) if (img.src===fullSrc)
{
img.src = "/img/1x1blank.gif"; // do the same as for on-page images!
blankList.push(img);
}
// ##### If necessary, do something here that tells all accessible windows not to create any *new* images with src===fullSrc, until further notice,
// ##### (or perhaps to create them initially blank instead and add them to blankList).
// ##### For example, you might have (say) a global object window.top.blankedSrces as a propery of your topmost window, initially set = {}. Then you could do:
// #####
// ##### var bs = window.top.blankedSrces;
// ##### if (bs.hasOwnProperty(src)) bs[src]++; else bs[src] = 1;
// #####
// ##### And before creating a new image using javascript, you'd first ensure that (blankedSrces.hasOwnProperty(src)) was false...
// ##### Note that incrementing a counter here rather than just setting a flag allows for the possibility that multiple forced-reloads of the same image are underway at once, or are overlapping.
return blankList; // optional - only if using blankList for restoring back the blanked images! This just gets passed in to imgReloadRestore(), it isn't used otherwise.
}
// This function restores all blanked images, that were blanked out by imgReloadBlank(src) for the matching src argument.
// ##### You should code the actual contents of this function according to your page design, and what images there are on them, as well as how/if images are dimensioned, etc!!! #####
function imgReloadRestore(src,blankList,imgDim,loadError);
{
// ##### Everything here is provisional on the way the pages are designed, and what images they contain; what follows is for example purposes only!
// ##### For really simple pages containing just a single image that's always the one being refreshed, this function could be as simple as just the one line:
// ##### document.getElementById("myImage").src = src;
// ##### if in imgReloadBlank() you did something to tell all accessible windows not to create any *new* images with src===fullSrc until further notice, retract that setting now!
// ##### For example, if you used the global object window.top.blankedSrces as described there, then you could do:
// #####
// ##### var bs = window.top.blankedSrces;
// ##### if (bs.hasOwnProperty(src)&&--bs[src]) return; else delete bs[src]; // return here means don't restore until ALL forced reloads complete.
var i, img, width = imgDim&&imgDim[0], height = imgDim&&imgDim[1];
if (width) width += "px";
if (height) height += "px";
if (loadError) {/* If you want, do something about an image that couldn't load, e.g: src = "/img/brokenImg.jpg"; or alert("Couldn't refresh image from server!"); */}
// If you saved & returned blankList in imgReloadBlank(), you can just use this to restore:
for (i = blankList.length; i--;)
{
(img = blankList[i]).src = src;
if (width) img.style.width = width;
if (height) img.style.height = height;
}
}
// Force an image to be reloaded from the server, bypassing/refreshing the cache.
// due to limitations of the browser API, this actually requires TWO load attempts - an initial load into a hidden iframe, and then a call to iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
// If image is from a different domain (i.e. cross-domain restrictions are in effect, you must set isCrossDomain = true, or the script will crash!
// imgDim is a 2-element array containing the image x and y dimensions, or it may be omitted or null; it can be used to set a new image size at the same time the image is updated, if applicable.
// if "twostage" is true, the first load will occur immediately, and the return value will be a function
// that takes a boolean parameter (true to proceed with the 2nd load (including the blank-and-reload procedure), false to cancel) and an optional updated imgDim.
// This allows you to do the first load early... for example during an upload (to the server) of the image you want to (then) refresh.
function forceImgReload(src, isCrossDomain, imgDim, twostage)
{
var blankList, step = 0, // step: 0 - started initial load, 1 - wait before proceeding (twostage mode only), 2 - started forced reload, 3 - cancelled
iframe = window.document.createElement("iframe"), // Hidden iframe, in which to perform the load+reload.
loadCallback = function(e) // Callback function, called after iframe load+reload completes (or fails).
{ // Will be called TWICE unless twostage-mode process is cancelled. (Once after load, once after reload).
if (!step) // initial load just completed. Note that it doesn't actually matter if this load succeeded or not!
{
if (twostage) step = 1; // wait for twostage-mode proceed or cancel; don't do anything else just yet
else { step = 2; blankList = imgReloadBlank(src); iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true); } // initiate forced-reload
}
else if (step===2) // forced re-load is done
{
imgReloadRestore(src,blankList,imgDim,(e||window.event).type==="error"); // last parameter checks whether loadCallback was called from the "load" or the "error" event.
if (iframe.parentNode) iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
}
}
iframe.style.display = "none";
window.parent.document.body.appendChild(iframe); // NOTE: if this is done AFTER setting src, Firefox MAY fail to fire the load event!
iframe.addEventListener("load",loadCallback,false);
iframe.addEventListener("error",loadCallback,false);
iframe.src = (isCrossDomain ? "/echoimg.php?src="+encodeURIComponent(src) : src); // If src is cross-domain, script will crash unless we embed the image in a same-domain html page (using server-side script)!!!
return (twostage
? function(proceed,dim)
{
if (!twostage) return;
twostage = false;
if (proceed)
{
imgDim = (dim||imgDim); // overwrite imgDim passed in to forceImgReload() - just in case you know the correct img dimensions now, but didn't when forceImgReload() was called.
if (step===1) { step = 2; blankList = imgReloadBlank(src); iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true); }
}
else
{
step = 3;
if (iframe.contentWindow.stop) iframe.contentWindow.stop();
if (iframe.parentNode) iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
}
}
: null);
}
Then, to force a refresh of an image located on the same domain as your page, you can just do:
forceImgReload("myimage.jpg");
To refresh an image from somewhere else (cross-domain):
forceImgReload("http://someother.server.com/someimage.jpg", true);
A more advanced application might be to reload an image after uploading a new version to your server, preparing the initial stage of the reload process simultaneous with the upload, to minimize the visible reload delay to the user. If you're doing the upload via AJAX, and the server is returning a very simple JSON array [success, width, height] then your code might look something like this:
// fileForm is a reference to the form that has a the <input typ="file"> on it, for uploading.
// serverURL is the url at which the uploaded image will be accessible from, once uploaded.
// The response from uploadImageToServer.php is a JSON array [success, width, height]. (A boolean and two ints).
function uploadAndRefreshCache(fileForm, serverURL)
{
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(),
proceedWithImageRefresh = forceImgReload(serverURL, false, null, true);
xhr.addEventListener("load", function(){ var arr = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText); if (!(arr&&arr[0])) { proceedWithImageRefresh(false); doSomethingOnUploadFailure(...); } else { proceedWithImageRefresh(true,[arr[1],ar[2]]); doSomethingOnUploadSuccess(...); }});
xhr.addEventListener("error", function(){ proceedWithImageRefresh(false); doSomethingOnUploadError(...); });
xhr.addEventListener("abort", function(){ proceedWithImageRefresh(false); doSomethingOnUploadAborted(...); });
// add additional event listener(s) to track upload progress for graphical progress bar, etc...
xhr.open("post","uploadImageToServer.php");
xhr.send(new FormData(fileForm));
}
A final note: Although this topic is about images, it potentially applies to other kinds of files or resources also. For example, preventing the use of stale script or css files, or perhaps even refreshing updated PDF documents (using (4) only if set up to open in-browser). Method (4) might require some changes to the above javascript, in these cases.

As an alternative to...
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg?" + new Date().getTime();
...it seems that...
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg#" + new Date().getTime();
...is sufficient to fool the browser cache without bypassing any upstream caches, assuming you returned the correct Cache-Control headers. Although you can use...
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
...you lose the benefits of the If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match headers, so something like...
Cache-Control: max-age=0, must-revalidate
...should prevent the browser from re-downloading the entire image if it hasn't actually changed. Tested and working on IE, Firefox, and Chrome. Annoyingly it fails on Safari unless you use...
Cache-Control: no-store
...although this still may be preferable to filling upstream caches with hundreds of identical images, particularly when they're running on your own server. ;-)
Update (2014-09-28): Nowadays it looks like Cache-Control: no-store is needed for Chrome as well.

2021 ANSWER: You can simply use fetch with the cache option set to 'reload' to update the cache:
fetch("my-image-url.jpg", {cache: 'reload', mode: 'no-cors'})
The following function will update the cache and reload your image everywhere in your page:
async function reloadImg(url) {
await fetch(url, { cache: 'reload', mode: 'no-cors' })
document.body.querySelectorAll(`img[src='${url}']`)
.forEach(img => img.src = url)
}
It returns a promise so you can use it like await reloadImg("my-image-url.jpg") if you wish.
Nowadays the fetch API is available almost everywhere (except on IE, of course).

After creating the new image, are you removing the old image from the DOM and replacing it with the new one?
You could be grabbing new images every updateImage call, but not adding them to the page.
There are a number of ways to do it. Something like this would work.
function updateImage()
{
var image = document.getElementById("theText");
if(image.complete) {
var new_image = new Image();
//set up the new image
new_image.id = "theText";
new_image.src = image.src;
// insert new image and remove old
image.parentNode.insertBefore(new_image,image);
image.parentNode.removeChild(image);
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}
After getting that working, if there are still problems it is probably a caching issue like the other answers talk about.

<img src='someurl.com/someimage.ext' onload='imageRefresh(this, 1000);'>
Then below in some javascript
<script language='javascript'>
function imageRefresh(img, timeout) {
setTimeout(function() {
var d = new Date;
var http = img.src;
if (http.indexOf("&d=") != -1) { http = http.split("&d=")[0]; }
img.src = http + '&d=' + d.getTime();
}, timeout);
}
</script>
And so what this does is, when the image loads, schedules it to be reloaded in 1 second. I'm using this on a page with home security cameras of varying type.

I had a requirement: 1) can't add any ?var=xx to the image 2) it should work cross-domain
I really like the #4 option in this answer with one but:
it has problems working with crossdomain reliably (and it requires touching the server code).
My quick and dirty way is:
Create hidden iframe
Load the current page to it (yeah the whole page)
iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
Re-set the image source to itself
Here it is
function RefreshCachedImage() {
if (window.self !== window.top) return; //prevent recursion
var $img = $("#MYIMAGE");
var src = $img.attr("src");
var iframe = document.createElement("iframe");
iframe.style.display = "none";
window.parent.document.body.appendChild(iframe);
iframe.src = window.location.href;
setTimeout(function () {
iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
setTimeout(function () {
$img.removeAttr("src").attr("src", src);
}, 2000);
}, 2000);
}
Yeah, I know, setTimeout... You have to change that to proper onload-events.

One answer is to hackishly add some get query parameter like has been suggested.
A better answer is to emit a couple of extra options in your HTTP header.
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 14:19:41 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
By providing a date in the past, it won't be cached by the browser. Cache-Control was added in HTTP/1.1 and the must-revalidate tag indicates that proxies should never serve up an old image even under extenuating circumstances, and the Pragma: no-cache isn't really necessary for current modern browsers/caches but may help with some crufty broken old implementations.

What I ended up doing was having the server map any request for an image at that directory to the source that I was trying to update. I then had my timer append a number onto the end of the name so the DOM would see it as a new image and load it.
E.g.
http://localhost/image.jpg
//and
http://localhost/image01.jpg
will request the same image generation code but it will look like different images to the browser.
var newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg";
var count = 0;
function updateImage()
{
if(newImage.complete) {
document.getElementById("theText").src = newImage.src;
newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image/id/image" + count++ + ".jpg";
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}

function reloadImage(imageId)
{
path = '../showImage.php?cache='; //for example
imageObject = document.getElementById(imageId);
imageObject.src = path + (new Date()).getTime();
}
<img src='../showImage.php' id='myimage' />
<br/>
<input type='button' onclick="reloadImage('myimage')" />

This answer is based on several of the above answers but unifies and simplifies them a little and casts the answer as a JavaScript function.
function refreshCachedImage(img_id) {
var img = document.getElementById(img_id);
img.src = img.src; // trick browser into reload
};
I needed a solution to the problem of animated SVGs not restarting after they played through the first time.
This trick also works on other media like audio and video as well.

document.getElementById("img-id").src = document.getElementById("img-id").src
set its own src as its src.

I had this same issue using the Unsplash random image feature. The idea of adding a dummy query string to the end of the URL is correct, but in this instance a completely random parameter doesn't work (I tried it). I can imagine it's the same for some other services too, but for unsplash the parameter needs to be sig, so your image URL would be, for example, http://example.net/image.jpg?sig=RANDOM where random is a random string that will NOT be the same when you update it. I used Math.random()*100 but date is suitable too.
You need to do the above because without it, the browser will see that the image at said path has already been loaded, and will use that cached image to speed up loading.
See https://github.com/unsplash/unsplash-source-js/issues/9

Place a second copy of the image in the same spot, then remove the original image.
function refreshImg(ele){
ele.insertAdjacentHTML('beforebegin',ele.outerHTML);
ele.parentNode.removeChild(ele);
}
This will effectively refresh the image.
Crossbrowser too. insertAdjacentHTML, outerHTML, parentNode, and removeChild are all crossbrowser.
Performance wise, performance loss will most likely be negligible in most cases. #Paolo Bergantino's answer is probably better than this function. Only one DOM element is affected using his answer. Two elements with this function.

Try using a worthless querystring to make it a unique url:
function updateImage()
{
if(newImage.complete) {
document.getElementById("theText").src = newImage.src;
newImage = new Image();
number++;
newImage.src = "http://localhost/image.jpg?" + new Date();
}
setTimeout(updateImage, 1000);
}

Heavily based on Doin's #4 code, the below example simplifies that code a great bit utilising document.write instead of src in the iframe to support CORS. Also only focuses on busting the browser cache, not reloading every image on the page.
Below is written in typescript and uses the angular $q promise library, just fyi, but should be easy enough to port to vanilla javascript. Method is meant to live inside a typescript class.
Returns a promise that will be resolved when the iframe has completed reloading. Not heavily tested, but works well for us.
mmForceImgReload(src: string): ng.IPromise<void> {
var deferred = $q.defer<void>();
var iframe = window.document.createElement("iframe");
var firstLoad = true;
var loadCallback = (e) => {
if (firstLoad) {
firstLoad = false;
iframe.contentWindow.location.reload(true);
} else {
if (iframe.parentNode) iframe.parentNode.removeChild(iframe);
deferred.resolve();
}
}
iframe.style.display = "none";
window.parent.document.body.appendChild(iframe);
iframe.addEventListener("load", loadCallback, false);
iframe.addEventListener("error", loadCallback, false);
var doc = iframe.contentWindow.document;
doc.open();
doc.write('<html><head><title></title></head><body><img src="' + src + '"></body></html>');
doc.close();
return deferred.promise;
}

I improved the script from AlexMA for showing my webcam on a web page wich periodically uploads a new image with the same name. I had issues that sometimes the image was flickering because of a broken image or not complete (up)loaded image. To prevent flickering I check the natural height of the image because the size of my webcam image did not change. Only if the loaded image height fits the original image height the full image will be shown on page.
<h3>Webcam</h3>
<p align="center">
<img id="webcam" title="Webcam" onload="updateImage();" src="https://www.your-domain.com/webcam/current.jpg" alt="webcam image" width="900" border="0" />
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
// off-screen image to preload next image
var newImage = new Image();
newImage.src = "https://www.your-domain.com/webcam/current.jpg";
// remember the image height to prevent showing broken images
var height = newImage.naturalHeight;
function updateImage()
{
// for sure if the first image was a broken image
if(newImage.naturalHeight > height)
{
height = newImage.naturalHeight;
}
// off-screen image loaded and the image was not broken
if(newImage.complete && newImage.naturalHeight == height)
{
// show the preloaded image on page
document.getElementById("webcam").src = newImage.src;
}
// preload next image with cachebreaker
newImage.src = "https://www.your-domain.com/webcam/current.jpg?time=" + new Date().getTime();
// refresh image (set the refresh interval to half of webcam refresh,
// in my case the webcam refreshes every 5 seconds)
setTimeout(updateImage, 2500);
}
</script>
</p>

I solved this problem by sending the data back through a servlet.
response.setContentType("image/png");
response.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache");
response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache, must-revalidate");
response.setDateHeader("Expires", 0);
BufferedImage img = ImageIO.read(new File(imageFileName));
ImageIO.write(img, "png", response.getOutputStream());
Then from the page you just give it the servlet with some params to grab the correct image file.
<img src="YourServlet?imageFileName=imageNum1">

Here's my solution. It's very simple. The frame scheduling could be better.
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Image Refresh</title>
</head>
<body>
<!-- Get the initial image. -->
<img id="frame" src="frame.jpg">
<script>
// Use an off-screen image to load the next frame.
var img = new Image();
// When it is loaded...
img.addEventListener("load", function() {
// Set the on-screen image to the same source. This should be instant because
// it is already loaded.
document.getElementById("frame").src = img.src;
// Schedule loading the next frame.
setTimeout(function() {
img.src = "frame.jpg?" + (new Date).getTime();
}, 1000/15); // 15 FPS (more or less)
})
// Start the loading process.
img.src = "frame.jpg?" + (new Date).getTime();
</script>
</body>
</html>

The following code is useful to refresh image when a button is clicked.
function reloadImage(imageId) {
imgName = 'vishnu.jpg'; //for example
imageObject = document.getElementById(imageId);
imageObject.src = imgName;
}
<img src='vishnu.jpg' id='myimage' />
<input type='button' onclick="reloadImage('myimage')" />

No need for new Date().getTime() shenanigans. You can trick the browser by having an invisible dummy image and using jQuery .load(), then creating a new image each time:
<img src="" id="dummy", style="display:none;" /> <!-- dummy img -->
<div id="pic"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var url = whatever;
// You can repeat the following as often as you like with the same url
$("#dummy").load(url);
var image = new Image();
image.src = url;
$("#pic").html("").append(image);
</script>

Simple solution: add this header to the response:
Cache-control: no-store
Why this works is clearly explained at this authoritative page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Cache-Control
It also explains why no-cache does not work.
Other answers do not work because:
Caching.delete is about a new cache that you may create for off-line work, see: https://web.dev/cache-api-quick-guide/
Fragments using a # in the URL do not work because the # tells the browser to not send a request to the server.
A cache-buster with a random part added to the url works, but will also fill the browser cache. In my app, I wanted to download a 5 MB picture every few seconds from a web cam. It will take just an hour or less to completely freeze your pc. I still don't know why the browser cache is not limited to a reasonable max, but this is definitely a disadvantage.

I used the below concept of first binding the image with a false(buffer) url and next binding it with the valid url.
imgcover.ImageUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["profileLargeImgPath"] + "Myapp_CoverPic_" + userid + "Buffer.jpg";
imgcover.ImageUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["profileLargeImgPath"] + "Myapp_CoverPic_" + userid + ".jpg";
This way, I am forcing the browser to refresh with valid url.

We Keep Coding

JavaScript is the programming language of the Web.

Preload JS, but don't run it - javascript

USE window.document.onload =function(){ preload_js = "http://domain.com/files/file.js"; } window.document.onload make sure the java script will not run until you dom is ready

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