Setting the HTTP request cache header

[cloudhead]

Currently, according to this, it seems like client-side caching will never be used:

ethers.js/packages/web/src.ts/browser-geturl.ts

Line 18 in ce8f1e4

cache: <RequestCache>"no-cache", // *default, no-cache, reload, force-cache, only-if-cached

It would be good to have a way to set the cache header to be able to take advantage of caching. What do you think?

[ricmoo]

I think caching could be unsafe, since most of thee calls are either not repeated (in which case caching doesn't help) or the results are expected to vary over time (e.g. eth_getBlockNumber).

What calls would you expect to benefit from caching enabled?

(moving to the "Ideas" section in discussions)

[cloudhead]

For example, resolving an ENS name. This is something that rarely changes. DNS uses caching extensively for name resolution.

In general with big applications there may be requests that are repeated when rendering a page, eg. if a certain component appears more than once on the page.

The alternative is to use application-layer caching, but this has to be implemented manually and separately for all objects.. or server-side caching, but not all applications have a server.