Generate HTML5 Cache Manifest files. Submitted by Scott Hillman.

Big thanks to Gunther Brunner for writing the grunt-manifest plugin. This plugin was heavily influenced by his great work.

Visit the HTML 5 Guide to AppCache for more information on Cache Manifest files.

First, install gulp-manifest as a dev dependency

npm install gulp-manifest --save-dev

This controls how this task (and its helpers) operate and should contain key:value pairs, see options below.

Type: String
Default: undefined

Add a prefix to the file paths. Useful when your files are in a different URL than the page.

Type: String
Default: undefined

Set a basepath for the files. Useful when the files are not served from the toplevel directory.

Type: String
Default: "app.manifest"

Set name of the Cache Manifest file.

Type: String
Default: undefined

Adds manually a string to the CACHE section. Needed when you have cache buster for example.

Type: String Array
Default: undefined

Exclude specific files from the Cache Manifest file.

Type: String Array
Default: "*" (By default, an online whitelist wildcard flag is added)

Adds a string to the NETWORK section.

See here for more information.

Type: String Array
Default: undefined

Adds a string to the FALLBACK section.

See here for more information.

Type: Boolean
Default: undefined

Adds a string to the SETTINGS section, specifically the cache mode flag of the prefer-online state.

See here for more information.

Type: Boolean
Default: true

Adds a timestamp as a comment for easy versioning.

Note: timestamp will invalidate application cache whenever cache manifest is rebuilt, even if contents of files in src have not changed.

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Adds a sha256 hash of all src files (actual contents) as a comment.

This will ensure that application cache invalidates whenever actual file contents change (it's recommented to set timestamp to false when hash is used).

gulp.task('manifest', function(){
  gulp.src(['build/*'])
    .pipe(manifest({
      hash: true,
      preferOnline: true,
      network: ['*'],
      filename: 'app.manifest',
      exclude: 'app.manifest'
     }))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('build'));
});

CACHE MANIFEST

CACHE:
js/app.js
css/style
css/style.css
js/zepto.min.js
js/script.js
some_files/index.html
some_files/about.html

NETWORK:
*

# hash: 76f0ef591f999871e1dbdf6d5064d1276d80846feeef6b556f74ad87b44ca16a

You do need to be fully aware of standard browser caching. If the files in CACHE are in the network cache, they won't actually update, since the network cache will spit back the same file to the application cache. Therefore, it's recommended to add a hash to the filenames's, akin to rails or yeoman. See here why query strings are not recommended.