§6 Relationship to Applications and Other Caches RFC 9111

Applications using HTTP often specify additional forms of caching. For example, Web browsers often have history mechanisms such as "Back" buttons that can be used to redisplay a representation retrieved earlier in a session.

Likewise, some Web browsers implement caching of images and other assets within a page view; they may or may not honor HTTP caching semantics.

The requirements in this specification do not necessarily apply to how applications use data after it is retrieved from an HTTP cache. For example, a history mechanism can display a previous representation even if it has expired, and an application can use cached data in other ways beyond its freshness lifetime.

This specification does not prohibit the application from taking HTTP caching into account; for example, a history mechanism might tell the user that a view is stale, or it might honor cache directives (e.g., Cache-Control: no-store).

However, when an application caches data and does not make this apparent to or easily controllable by the user, it is strongly encouraged to define its operation with respect to HTTP cache directives so as not to surprise authors who expect caching semantics to be honored. For example, while it might be reasonable to define an application cache "above" HTTP that allows a response containing Cache-Control: no-store to be reused for requests that are directly related to the request that fetched it (such as those created during the same page load), it would likely be surprising and confusing to users and authors if it were allowed to be reused for requests unrelated in any way to the one from which it was obtained.