title: Is Apache caching request URLs?
body: <p>I'm sitting here trying to find a way around URL-rewriting for my new site. It's going to be a fully AJAX-based site where the URL has no importance in 90 % of the URL's.</p>
  
  <p>After pressing F12 in Chrome and going to Network, I started monitoring the responsiveness as I changed the parameters in .htaccess.</p>
  
  <p>I found that when entering an address that the server hadn't seen since restart, it spent 80-100ms to process the request (wait time). This is running on the localhost. This occured both when changing the dynamic part of the GET-request ?id=changeThis and when entering new URLs like /id/changeThis.. The next time however, it takes 8-12ms to process...</p>
  
  <p>If I use <code>^(.*)</code> to redirect all requests to index.php didn't have an impact.</p>
  
  <p>Question: Would it in a bigger scale matter if I use <code>^([a-zA-Z\-/]*)</code> (notice no period) to make static files like main.css not be rewritten, or is it best to put all files in a static folder (and thus loose flexibility) and still use <code>^(.*)</code> to redirect all requests not in the static exception folder. (I'm thinking speed here.)</p>
  
  <p>Question: Can anyone approve my findings? Does Apache really 'cache' the requests, so that the first request to a specific URL will take time to process?</p>