Caches & Indexes

Please note that this article is only for users of a self-hosted store. This is not relevant for users of a Shopware 6 SaaS environment.

In the module Caches & Indexes you are able to empty and warm up the cache. It also gives you an overview of some system configurations.

Configuration overview

In the overview you will get the information whether your shop is used in productive mode. This is indicated by the entry "Production" in the Environment (1).
You can also see here whether the HTTP cache is active (2) and which cache adapter (3) is used.

You can adjust the environment mode and HTTP cache in the .env file in the Shopware main directory.
For more information on how to customize the environment settings, click here.

SHOPWARE_HTTP_CACHE_ENABLED=1

activated. (=0) deactivates the cache.
 

Manage Caches & Indexes

In the lower part of the module, you have different functions for the cache and the indexes.

• Clear data cache (4)
  You use the data cache to delete all non-essential store data that has nothing to do with the price calculation. These are, for example, changes in experience worlds. 
  
  

• Clear cache (5)
  This can be used to empty the caches without having to reheat them directly afterwards.
  This is also available in the console.

  php bin/console cache:clear

• Indexes (6)
  Updates the indexes such as the category and product indexes and the SEO URLs.
  In the console, this can be done using the command

  php bin/console dal:refresh:index

  You can use the two drop-down menus (7) to select all the indices that are to be updated.

  Use the drop-down menu indexers and/or updaters to skip to select the indices to be updated. With the first Method drop-down menu Method, you can select whether all selected indices should be updated (Only update selected) or all unselected indices (Update all, but skip selected).

  Below you will find a list of the indices that can be updated here. Entries with a “-” are sub-items of the index listed above. If the main index is selected, the sub-items are also selected.

  Indizes	Description
  category.indexer	Creates an index for the categories
  - category.child-count	Creates an index with a count of subcategories
  - category.tree	Creates an index of the category tree (categories and their subcategories)
  - category.breadcrumb	Creates an index of the category tree to use it in the breadcrumb bar
  - category.seo-url	Creates an index of the seo-urls of the categories
  customer.indexer	Creates a search index of the customers
  - customer.many-to-many-id-field	Supporting task to join the tables
  landing_page.indexer	Creates an index of all landing pages
  - landing_page.many-to-many-id-field	Supporting task to join the tables
  - landing_page.seo-url	Creates an index of the seo-urls of the landing pages
  media.indexer	Creates an index of the media files
  - media_folder.indexer	Creates an index of the media folders
  - media_folder.child-count	Counts the subfolders within the media folder
  media_folder_configuration.indexer	Updates the configs of subfolders according the master media folder
  payment_method.indexer	Creates an index of the payment methods
  product.indexer	Creates an index of all products
  - product.inheritance	Updates the connections between products and their variants.
  - product.stock	Indexes the available stock of the products
  - product.variant-listing	Creates an index of all variants in the products
  - product.child-count	Counts the variants
  - product.many-to-many-id-field	Supporting task to join the tables
  - product.category-denormalizer	Checks for abandoned products in categories(dead links) and removes them.
  - product.cheapest-price	Determines the cheapest price within the products
  - product.rating-averaget	Creates an average of the rating points of the product reviews
  - product.stream	Creates the product listings for the dynamic product groups
  - product.search-keyword	Defines a list of all search-keywords of the products
  - product.seo-url	Creates a list of seo-urls of the products
  product_stream.indexer	Creates an index of the dynamic product groups
  product_stream_mapping.indexer	Creates an index of mapping between categories and dynamic product groups
  promotion.indexer	Creates an index of the promotions
  - promotion.exclusion	Creates an index of exclusions within the promotions (Do not combine with...)
  - promotion.redemption	Updates the list of promotions used by customers
  rule.indexer	Creates an index of the Rules within the Rule Builder
  - rule.payload	Creates an index of conditions in the rules
  sales_channel.indexer	Creates an index of all sales channels
  - sales_channel.many-to-many	Supporting task to join the tables
  flow.indexer	Creates an index of all flows in the Flow Builder
  newsletter_recipient.indexer	Creates an index of newsletter-recipients

Empty cache automatically

In Shopware 6 Standard, the cache is not cleared automatically. In the long run, this can lead to the Shopware installation becoming larger and larger and requiring more and more space on the server.

To clear the cache of the shop manually, you can use the Shopware CLI. How to use the Shopware CLI you can also find here.
To clear your cache, you can use the following command in the Shopware CLI:

php bin/console cache:clear

On a live system, we recommend that after clearing a cache, you also warm it up again. You can warm up the cache with the following command:

php bin/console cache:warmup

So that these commands do not have to be executed manually at regular intervals, we recommend executing them via cronjob once a day. This should be executed when the traffic on the shop is at its lowest. This can then always be done at night, for example. How you can set up a regular cronjob on a Linux server, for example, can be found here.

If the cache can not be deleted via the Shopware CLI command, you can try to delete the cache folders manually with the following command:

rm -rf SHOPWARE-ROOT-FOLDER/var/cache/*

Why is it useful to empty/update it?

The cache in Shopware 6 stores data with the purpose of speeding up future requests. Basically, the data stored in a cache can be the result of a previous interaction with websites. A Shopware 6 index is a list of data stored in a simple text format. In most cases, indexes represent a group of files or database records that are quickly searched by a search algorithm. Consequently, search and sorting operations are greatly improved, resulting in new levels of performance.