swift - How to clear AlamofireImage setImageWithURL cache

Question

I am using AlamofireImage in my project quite a lot and I use

let URL = NSURL(string: "https://cdn.domain.com/profile/image.jpg")!
imageView.af_setImageWithURL(URL)

to fetch an image from my CDN. I have done some tests but correct me if I am wrong, this seems to store the downloaded image in to a cache. My tests included downloading a 5mb image. The first time it took about 20 seconds, the second time was instant.

The thing I would like to know is how can I clear the cache for a specific URL/image and re-download the image?

Say for example I update a users profile pic. The image name/URL will be exactly the same but I know the image has changes as the user selected a new image from their library or camera. I know the image has been uploaded successfully to the CDN as I can see the new image in the folder directly on the CDN.

Answer 1

You need to remove the image from the in-memory cache as well as the on-disk cache. You can do this as follows:

func clearImageFromCache() {
    let URL = NSURL(string: "https://cdn.domain.com/profile/image.jpg")!
    let URLRequest = NSURLRequest(URL: URL)

    let imageDownloader = UIImageView.af_sharedImageDownloader

    // Clear the URLRequest from the in-memory cache
    imageDownloader.imageCache?.removeImageForRequest(URLRequest, withAdditionalIdentifier: nil)

    // Clear the URLRequest from the on-disk cache
    imageDownloader.sessionManager.session.configuration.URLCache?.removeCachedResponseForRequest(URLRequest)
}

Currently, the URLCache can only be cleared in this manner on the master branch. I just pushed f35e4748 which allows access to the underlying sessionManager in the ImageDownloader. This is not yet available in an actual release yet, but should be here sometime this week.