Yii2: Is there a Yii-way to force the browser reloading a CSS file?

Question

Normally I would just do something like this:

<link href="main.css?<?= filemtime($file) ?>">

Is there a better way in Yii? – If not, is there a way I can add this to $this->head() for a specific CSS file?

Answer 1

If you are properly using asset bundles to load your styles you can set yii\web\AssetManager::$appendTimestamp property of asset manager component to append timestamp automatically.

You can do that in your app config file (for example frontend/config/main.php):

return [
    'components' => [
        'assetManager' => [
            'appendTimestamp' => true,
        ],
    ],
    // ... other configurations ...
]

See the guide article for more info about asset bundles.