Live page fetching over https #32

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opened 2026-09-27 11:40:24 -07:00 by girlnamedzero · 0 comments

girlnamedzero commented

2026-09-27 11:40:24 -07:00

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To elaborate, the offical tldr clients fetch pages live, caching them locally only after you've downloaded them for the first time.

Currently, cldr will only download the entire database locally, opting to fetch pages from the local storage, this approach has numerous performance benefits over live https fetches. But has the downside of storing roughly 20MB (for the english pages), and needing to update the database occasionally.

I'd like to have the option to make live fetches, however, it should not be the default.

Ideas for implementation:
We could search the local db first, and if a page is not found, try over https.
Alternatively, or additionally, we could have a parameter/environment variable telling the program to prioritize live and fallback to local, something like: --live, and TLDR_FETCH_PRIORITY=[live/local], setting it to local would do nothing

To elaborate, the offical tldr clients fetch pages live, caching them locally only after you've downloaded them for the first time. Currently, cldr will *only* download the entire database locally, opting to fetch pages from the local storage, this approach has numerous performance benefits over live https fetches. But has the downside of storing roughly 20MB (for the english pages), and needing to update the database occasionally. I'd like to have the option to make live fetches, however, it should not be the default. Ideas for implementation: We could search the local db first, and if a page is not found, try over https. Alternatively, or additionally, we could have a parameter/environment variable telling the program to prioritize live and fallback to local, something like: --live, and TLDR_FETCH_PRIORITY=[live/local], setting it to local would do nothing

girlnamedzero added this to the Roadmap / Plans project

2026-09-27 11:40:24 -07:00

girlnamedzero added the

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2026-10-11 17:01:43 -07:00