[boost] Boost

Doesn't dynamic_page_cache in core basically make boost obsolete?

@bojanz - I don't think the dynamic_page_cache bypasses PHP entirely. Boost makes it possible to basically run an entire Drupal site with Apache and no PHP overhead. I use it a lot less nowadays, since Nginx and Varnish are so much nicer/easier to set up for static caching, but it still has it's place. D8 has made great strides, though, and it might be enough for some people to not consider Boost anymore.

@geerlingguy is mostly correct.

I don't think Dynamic Page Cache is even relevant here. Boost is about serving static HTML to anonymous users. So Page Cache is the correct comparison here. And D8 ships with Page Cache enabled by default, so indeed for many sites Boost will no longer be necessary: Page Cache will be enough.

But, because Boost caches to disk and uses Apache rewrite rules rather than Page Cache's caching to a cache backend (usually database) using PHP, Boost still can make sense.

Boost in D8 should probably disable Page Cache's middleware in D8, because when you use Boost, it's pointless to also use Page Cache. OTOH, I don't know how well Boost handles session cookies, so maybe that's a bit premature.

@wimleers - then shouldn't the new Boost just set a file cache backend for Page cache?

@GaëlG, no, again, Boost allows you to serve static HTML directly from Apache. i.e. zero PHP executed. A File cache back-end for the Page Cache does still execute PHP.

I came across a D8 version of boost on Github - https://github.com/swim/boost. No Apache config yet though.

Would be nice to have this in D8 at some point although we're not switching to D8 yet.

For D7, we LOVE boost to cache json (ajax) and pages, we've perfected our rewrite rules and regex so that it works extremely well and we also created a module called boost_blast to make sure that the caches are completely cleared when we want them to be. Our site is pretty small, only about 20000 pages.

Here is our rewriteRules (for IIS) , eventually we'll switch to Apache or nginx

        <rule name="Boost json" enabled="true" stopProcessing="true">
            <match url=".*" ignoreCase="false" />
            <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">
                <add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="^GET$" ignoreCase="false" />
                <add input="{URL}" pattern="(^(admin|cache|misc|modules|sites|system|themes|node/add))|(/(comment/reply|edit|user|user/(login|password|register))$)" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                <add input="{HTTP_COOKIE}" pattern="DRUPAL_UID" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="on" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                <add input="{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/sites/default/files/cache/normal/{SERVER_NAME}{URL}_{QUERY_STRING}.json" matchType="IsFile" />
            </conditions>
            <serverVariables>
                <set name="CONTENT_TYPE" value="application/json" /> <!-- text/javascript -->
            </serverVariables>
            <action type="Rewrite" url="sites/default/files/cache/normal/{SERVER_NAME}{URL}_{QUERY_STRING}.json" />
        </rule>

        <rule name="Boost html" enabled="true" stopProcessing="true">
                <match url=".*" ignoreCase="false" />
                <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">
                        <add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="^GET$" ignoreCase="false" />
                        <add input="{URL}" pattern="\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{URL}" pattern="(^(admin|cache|misc|modules|sites|system|themes|node/add))|(/(comment/reply|edit|user|user/(login|password|register))$)" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{HTTP_COOKIE}" pattern="DRUPAL_UID" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="on" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/sites/default/files/cache/normal/{SERVER_NAME}{URL}_{QUERY_STRING}.html" matchType="IsFile" />
                </conditions>
                <serverVariables>
                        <set name="CONTENT_TYPE" value="text/html" />
                </serverVariables>
                <action type="Rewrite" url="sites/default/files/cache/normal/{SERVER_NAME}{URL}_{QUERY_STRING}.html" />
        </rule>

adding this to our rewrite rules was necessary:
<add input="{URL}" pattern="\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$" negate="true" />

prevents jpeg/gif/png to be cached as html , happens when image styles are being processed and the server responds with text saying ("compiling image style please wait") instead of the image

Proposed static html caching for Drupal core
#2957610: Static HTML file caching in Drupal Core - Boost

And symfony already has a static cache plugins with htaccess rewrite rules https://packagist.org/packages/pablok/supercache-bundle

Thanks Wim. :) Just updated the description of the core idea issue: the Wordpress counterpart of Boost has over 2 million installs, so I am sure there would be demand if there was a working solution :P https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Some progress was made here as well :) #2009898: Port Boost for Drupal 8

The project does not have releases for supported Drupal versions.

why would this be closed as "outdated"?

There's been a lot of work done and there is a dev release available for Drupal 10 and Drupal 11

https://www.drupal.org/project/boost/releases/8.x-1.x-dev

That is not a stable release.

Furthermore, the purpose of this queue was not to track a project progress to Drupal 10; for that, the project issue queue is used.

Ok sure, just wanted to make everyone aware that there has been significant work done on the boost project and that there is a dev release available that is for current drupal.

I hope to see a tagged release soon. Perhaps an alpha or beta could be tagged which might bring more attention back to the boost project and lead to further development.

The development version has been created six years ago; an alpha release could have been created at least three years ago.

Porting code to Drupal 10 is not that simple, but it would be possible to do that task and create alpha releases along the process.

@avpaderno, agreed, I'm a big fan of tags and releases!