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https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine

A Varnish extension for Magento.
https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine

magento magento-extension magento-module magento1 php varnish

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A Varnish extension for Magento.

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# [Nexcess.net](https://www.nexcess.net/) Turpentine Extension for Magento

[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/nexcess/magento-turpentine.png?branch=master,devel)](https://travis-ci.org/nexcess/magento-turpentine)

[![Scrutinizer](https://scrutinizer-ci.com/g/nexcess/magento-turpentine/badges/quality-score.png?b=master)](https://scrutinizer-ci.com/g/nexcess/magento-turpentine/)



Turpentine is a full page cache extension for [Magento](https://www.magentocommerce.com/)

that works with [Varnish](https://www.varnish-cache.org/), a very fast caching reverse-proxy. By

default, Varnish doesn't cache requests with cookies and Magento sends the

*frontend* cookie with every request causing a (near) zero hit-rate for Varnish's cache.

Turpentine configures Varnish to work with Magento and modifies Magento's

behaviour to significantly improve the cache hit rate.



Note that while this extension is now considered *stable*, it is strongly

recommended that it be tested on a development/staging site before deploying

on a production site due to the potential need to add custom ESI policies

for blocks added by other extensions.



## Features



  * Full Page Caching, with hole-punching via Varnish ESI and/or AJAX, even for

  logged in visitors

  * Configurable via standard Magento methods (Admin system configuration and

  layout XML), no manual editing of Varnish config required for most cases

  * Able to generate and apply new Varnish VCLs (configurations) on the fly,

  without restarting/changing Varnish's config files or flushing the cache

  * Blacklist requests from caching by URL or parameters (SID, store, etc)

  * Configure cache TTL by URL and individual block's TTL

  * Supports multiple Varnish instances for clustered usage

  * Automatic cache clearing on actions (clearing product/catalog/cms page after saving)

  * Supports non-root Magento installs (i.e. putting Magento in /store/ instead

  of /) and multi-store/multi-site setups

  * Support for site-crawlers for cache warming, and includes a (basic)

  built-in site-crawler

  * [SSL support](https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine/wiki/SSL_Support)

  through [Pound](http://www.apsis.ch/pound) or [Nginx](http://nginx.org/)



## Requirements



  * Magento Community Edition 1.6+ or Magento Enterprise Edition 1.11+

  * Varnish 2.1+ (including 3.0+)



## Installation & Usage



See the [Installation](https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine/wiki/Installation)

and [Usage](https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine/wiki/Usage) pages.



## Support



If you have an issue, please read the [FAQ](https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine/wiki/FAQ)

then if you still need help, open a bug report in GitHub's

[issue tracker](https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine/issues).



Please do not use Magento Connect's Reviews or (especially) the Q&A for support.

There isn't a way for me to reply to reviews and the Q&A moderation is very slow.



## Contributing



If you have a fix or feature for Turpentine, submit a pull request through GitHub

to the **devel** branch. The *master* branch is only for stable releases. Please

make sure the new code follows the same style and conventions as already written

code.



## How it works



The extension works in two parts, page caching and block (ESI/AJAX) caching. A

simplified look at how they work:



For pages, Varnish first checks whether the visitor sent a ``frontend`` cookie.

If they didn't, then Varnish will generate a new session token for them. The page

is then served from cache (or fetched from the backend if it's not already in

the cache), with any blocks with ESI polices filled in via ESI. Note that the

cookie checking is bypassed for clients identified as crawlers (see the

``Crawler IP Addresses`` and ``Crawler User Agents`` settings).



For blocks, the extension listens for the ``core_block_abstract_to_html_before``

event in Magento. When this event is triggered, the extension looks at the block

attached to it and if an [ESI policy](https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine/wiki/ESI_Cache_Policy)

has been defined for the block then the

block's template is replaced with a simple ESI (or AJAX) template that tells Varnish to

pull the block content from a separate URL. Varnish then does another request to

that URL to get the content for that block, which can be cached separately from

the page and may differ between different visitors/clients.



## Notes and Caveats



  * Turpentine will **not** help (directly) with the speed of "actions" like adding things

  to the cart or checking out. It only caches, so it can only speed up page load

  speed for site browsing. It will remove a lot of load on the backend though so

  for heavily loaded sites it can free up enough backend resources to have a

  noticeable effect on "actions".

  * There are some technical limitations when using Varnish 2.1.x: External ESI

  requests are not blocked, and per-block TTLs in ESI policies are not honored

  (all blocks use the default TTL)

  * The core parts of Turpentine (caching and ESI/AJAX injection) work under Magento CE 1.5, but a significant

  portion of the auxiliary functionality doesn't work due to changes to event names. That

  said, it would be possible to use Turpentine with Magento CE 1.5 with an understanding

  that it is not supported and what actions need to be taken manually. Both

  *cache flushing* (both automatic an manual) and *cache warming* (due to

  missing events that trigger the cache flushing) do not work.

  * Anonymous blocks are not able to be hole-punched. For CMS pages, it is

  recommended that you include the block in the page's layout updates XML and

  give it a name, then it can have an ESI policy like normal



## Known Issues



  * Logging and statistics will show all requests as coming from the same IP address

  (usually localhost/127.0.0.1). It should be possible to work around this using

  Apache's [mod_remoteip](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/mod/mod_remoteip.html)

  or [mod_rpaf](http://www.stderr.net/apache/rpaf/).



## Demo



See the [Demo Sites](https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine/wiki/Demo-Sites)

wiki page.



If you use Turpentine (on a production site), feel free to add your site to the

list!



## License



The code is licensed under GPLv2+, much of the ESI-specific code is taken from

Hugues Alary's [Magento-Varnish](https://github.com/huguesalary/Magento-Varnish)

extension, which is licensed as GPLv3.