How can I update files on Amazon's CDN (CloudFront)?

Question

Is there any way to update files stored on Amazon CloudFront (Amazon's CDN service)? Seems like it won't take any update of a file we make (e.g. removing the file and storing the new one with the same file name as before). Do I have to explicitly trigger an update process to remove the files from the edge servers to get the new file contents published?

Answer 1

Invalidation feature added by AWS

Sample Request from the API Reference:

POST /2010-08-01/distribution/[distribution ID]/invalidation HTTP/1.0

Host: cloudfront.amazonaws.com

Authorization: [AWS authentication string]

Content-Type: text/xml

<InvalidationBatch>

   <Path>/image1.jpg</Path>

   <Path>/image2.jpg</Path>

   <Path>/videos/movie.flv</Path>

   <CallerReference>my-batch</CallerReference>

</InvalidationBatch>