This page is a reference for deploying and supporting production apps that use the Angular service worker. It explains how the Angular service worker fits into the larger production environment, the service worker's behavior under various conditions, and available recourses and fail-safes.
Conceptually, you can imagine the Angular service worker as a forward cache or a CDN edge that is installed in the end user's web browser. The service worker's job is to satisfy requests made by the Angular app for resources or data from a local cache, without needing to wait for the network. Like any cache, it has rules for how content is expired and updated.
{@a versions}
### App versions
In the context of an Angular service worker, a "version" is a collection of resources that represent a specific build of the Angular app. Whenever a new build of the app is deployed, the service worker treats that build as a new version of the app. This is true even if only a single file is updated. At any given time, the service worker may have multiple versions of the app in its cache and it may be serving them simultaneously. For more information, see the [App tabs](guide/service-worker-devops#tabs) section below.
To preserve app integrity, the Angular service worker groups all files into a version together. The files grouped into a version usually include HTML, JS, and CSS files. Grouping of these files is essential for integrity because HTML, JS, and CSS files frequently refer to each other and depend on specific content. For example, an `index.html` file might have a `<script>` tag that references `bundle.js` and it might attempt to call a function `startApp()` from within that script. Any time this version of `index.html` is served, the corresponding `bundle.js` must be served with it. For example, assume that the `startApp()` function is renamed to `runApp()` in both files. In this scenario, it is not valid to serve the old `index.html`, which calls `startApp()`, along with the new bundle, which defines `runApp()`.
This file integrity is especially important when lazy loading modules.
A JS bundle may reference many lazy chunks, and the filenames of the
lazy chunks are unique to the particular build of the app. If a running
app at version `X` attempts to load a lazy chunk, but the server has
updated to version `X + 1` already, the lazy loading operation will fail.
The version identifier of the app is determined by the contents of all
resources, and it changes if any of them change. In practice, the version
is determined by the contents of the `ngsw.json` file, which includes
hashes for all known content. If any of the cached files change, the file's
hash will change in `ngsw.json`, causing the Angular service worker to
treat the active set of files as a new version.
With the versioning behavior of the Angular service worker, an application
server can ensure that the Angular app always has a consistent set of files.
* Errors during the build process could result in updated resources without `ngsw.json` being updated. The reverse could also happen resulting in an updated `ngsw.json` without updated resources.
#### Unhashed content
The only resources that have hashes in the `ngsw.json`
manifest are resources that were present in the `dist`
directory at the time the manifest was built. Other
resources, especially those loaded from CDNs, have
content that is unknown at build time or are updated
more frequently than the app is deployed.
If the Angular service worker does not have a hash to validate
a given resource, it still caches its contents but it honors
the HTTP caching headers by using a policy of "stale while
revalidate." That is, when HTTP caching headers for a cached
resource indicate that the resource has expired, the Angular
service worker continues to serve the content and it attempts
to refresh the resource in the background. This way, broken
unhashed resources do not remain in the cache beyond their
configured lifetimes.
{@a tabs}
### App tabs
It can be problematic for an app if the version of resources
it's receiving changes suddenly or without warning. See the
This indicates the last time the service worker checked for a new version, or update, of the app. `never` indicates that the service worker has never checked for an update.
In this example debug file, the update check is currently scheduled, as explained the next section.