Python3 web-server: Difference between localhost and 127.0.0.1?

Question

I'm creating a local web-server in python for web-page testing purposes. While testing the web-page, I get two different results depending on whether I open localhost:8000/index.html or 127.0.0.1:8000/index.html in the web-browser (Chrome).

In the first case, it pulls an older version of the index.js file (from like days-ago old); but the 127.0.0.1 version pulls the correct file. So why would I be getting two different javascript files depending on the source when both are technically from the same directory? Where might I find the days-old file at?

I run the server from the html directory using the command:

python3 test_server.py

Index.html, Index.css, Index.js and test_server.py are the only files located in the directory...

Thanks,

Answer 1

So this is a caching issue. The Python webserver is not even requesting the new js file from a couple days ago was pulled on localhost Whereas the one on 127.0.0.1 was either expired or never pulled, so chrome pulled a new one.

To do a hard pull in chrome, right mouse click and then click on inspect. This opens the dev tools. Now right mouse click on the refresh page button and click on 'Hard Reload'. This will tell chrome to disregard any cached files and instead pull them from the server.

To avoid having to do this each time:

Click on the network tab in the devtools and make sure the box disable cache is checked. However, be aware this will slow down load times on other sites, because no site will use caching with that box checked. So make sure you uncheck it when you are done doing dev work.