CloudFront – Cache Invalidations

Problem

• When the origin (e.g., S3 bucket) content is updated, CloudFront will still serve the old cached version until the TTL (Time to Live) expires.

Solution

• You can manually trigger a cache refresh before TTL expiration using a CloudFront Invalidation.

How it works

• Invalidate all files with /*

• Invalidate a specific file such as /index.html

• Invalidate a directory pattern such as /images/*

Example Use Case

• You update index.html and several files in /images/ on S3.

• You submit an invalidation request for:
• /index.html
• /images/*

• CloudFront removes those objects from all edge caches, and new versions are fetched from the origin on the next request.