Frequently Asked Questions
Hi, I'm Ryan Grove.
When you request certain types of files (like JavaScript, CSS, or HTML) from raw.githubusercontent.com or gist.githubusercontent.com, GitHub serves them with a Content-Type header set to text/plain. As a result, most modern browsers won't actually interpret these files as JavaScript, CSS, or HTML and will instead just display them as text.
GitHub does this because serving raw files from a git repo is inefficient and they want to discourage people from using their GitHub repos for static file hosting.
RawGit acts as a caching proxy. It forwards requests to GitHub, caches the responses, and relays them to your browser with an appropriate Content-Type header based on the extension of the file that was requested. The caching layer ensures that minimal load is placed on GitHub, and you get quick and easy static file hosting right from a GitHub repo. Everyone's happy!
No, RawGit is not associated with GitHub in any way. Please don't contact GitHub asking for help with RawGit.
When you make a request to a rawgit.com URL, the RawGit server loads the requested file from GitHub, serves it to your browser, and caches it for a short time. If you push new changes to GitHub, you can reload and see them within a few minutes. This makes rawgit.com useful for testing or sharing demos during development, but it also puts more server load on RawGit and GitHub.
Requests to cdn.rawgit.com are routed through MaxCDN's super fast content delivery network, and are cached permanently at the CDN layer based on the URL. This results in the best performance and reduces load on RawGit and on GitHub, but it means that reloading won't fetch new changes from GitHub.
During development, when traffic is low and freshness is more important than performance, use rawgit.com. For anything you share with the public or push to production, use cdn.rawgit.com.
No. Only use rawgit.com URLs for low-traffic testing or for sharing temporary demos with a few people during development. Please use cdn.rawgit.com for anything that might result in heavy traffic or that people might copy and paste into their own code.
Please don't use rawgit.com URLs in example code or in public demos, because people often copy and paste that code and use it in production apps without realizing that they need to change the RawGit URLs. Then they send too much traffic to RawGit, get throttled, and their apps break.
When people misuse rawgit.com development URLs, it costs me money. Please be considerate.
First, requests will be throttled and your site will start to load very slowly. If the traffic continues even after automatic throttling is triggered, RawGit will start serving an error page instead of the requested file. If traffic reaches truly excessive levels, then a big ugly error message may be displayed directly on your website asking your users to notify you of the problem.
This is designed to get your attention as quickly as possible before the excessive traffic becomes a major problem for RawGit and starts costing me large amounts of money or impacting other users of this service.
Remember, only use cdn.rawgit.com in production.
If you have to ask this question, you're probably sending too much traffic.
The CDN caches files permanently based on their path. It ignores query strings. This is done to improve performance and to make it possible for the CDN to handle massive amounts of traffic without causing excessive load on RawGit or GitHub's servers.
To ensure that the CDN always serves the version of the file you want, use a git tag or commit hash in the file's path instead of a branch name, and update the URL if you push a new version of the file.
So, instead of a URL like https://cdn.rawgit.com/user/repo/branch/file, use a URL like https://cdn.rawgit.com/user/repo/tag/file or https://cdn.rawgit.com/user/repo/commit/file.
No. RawGit is a free, best-effort service and cannot provide any uptime or support guarantees, even for the CDN.
While I do my best to keep things running, things sometimes go wrong. Sometimes there are network or provider issues outside my control. Sometimes abusive traffic temporarily affects response times. Sometimes things break while I'm asleep and I don't know there are problems until I wake up. And sometimes I break things by doing something dumb (although I try really hard not to).
Since I run RawGit in my spare time, with my own money and with CDN hosting generously donated by MaxCDN, it has a budget that's probably less than you pay for coffee in a given month. My goal is to help other open source developers get their projects up and running, but if you need to serve files that are crucial to your business, you should pay for a host with well-funded infrastructure and uptime guarantees.
I moved a file in my repo and now old RawGit URLs are broken. Is there any way to redirect to the new file?
There sure is (for non-CDN URLs, anyway). But in the future, you might want to consider using URLs based on a tag or commit ref rather than a branch, since tags and commits always represent a single point in time and won't break if you move a file later.
It's super nice of you to offer, but I don't need any donations at this time. RawGit's server costs are minimal, and the lovely people at MaxCDN provide RawGit's CDN service free of charge. Thank you though!
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To report a critical issue like RawGit being broken or to share general feedback, send a tweet to @rawgit or @yaypie. I try to respond quickly when I'm awake and near a computer, but sometimes I do have to sleep. If you don't get a response, just wait longer.
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To report a non-critical issue, please file an issue on RawGit's GitHub project.
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To report a security concern, please email
[email protected]privately. Feel free to encrypt your email using my public key if you're paranoid. Expect a response within 48 hours. -
To file a DMCA takedown notification or counter-notification, see RawGit's DMCA Notice & Takedown Procedure