Netlify Plugin: Custom Cache

A generic cache plugin for saving and restoring files and/or folders between Netlify builds for impressive speed improvements. Worry less about running out of build minutes! ⚡

In other words, this plugin is a pretty wrapper around Netlify's native cache utility — it isn't tied to any specific static site generator (on purpose).

Install

Add the following to your netlify.toml configuration:

[[plugins]]
package = "netlify-plugin-cache"
  [plugins.inputs]
  paths = ["resources", "_vendor", "folder/file.md"]

This plugin only takes one input named paths, an array of files and/or directories relative to your project's root. These files/directories are restored before a build and saved in cache after a build if it is successful.

🚨 Important: paths defaults to [".cache"], but it's highly recommended you set this yourself based on the tools you're using. See examples below.

Read more about plugin configuration at the official Netlify Plugin docs.

Usage examples

Hugo: Caching the resources directory can speed up your build greatly if you process a lot of images via Hugo pipes. You can also cache the public directory to avoid completely rebuilding the entire site on each deploy. More info here.
Gatsby: By default, the .cache directory holds persistent data between builds. You can also cache the dist directory to avoid completely rebuilding the entire site on each deploy. More info here.
Next.js: The .next directory holds the build output. More info here.
Anything else: This is the reason I kept this plugin as generic as possible! Research the caching behavior of your static site generator (and how to customize it if necessary). Feel free to make a PR and add it here as another example, too!

Debugging

This plugin doesn't provide a way to output a list of files that were cached or restored, because Netlify already provides an official plugin named netlify-plugin-debug-cache to do exactly that. No need to re-invent the wheel!

You can add their debug plugin after this plugin in your netlify.toml. (And yes, you need a [[plugins]] line for each plugin you add.)

[[plugins]]
package = "netlify-plugin-debug-cache"

The plugin will generate a file named cache-output.json at the root of your project's publish directory. See an example file or learn more about this plugin.

Licenses

This project is distributed under the MIT License.