Data freshness¶
Data passes through up to three layers: the source, cash-drugs (and rx-dag for NDCs), then drug-gate's cache. This page says how old each kind of data can be when it reaches you.
| Data | Source | How it's refreshed | Typical worst-case age |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drug names (autocomplete, names list) | FDA DailyMed | Full list re-fetched every 6 hours | ~7 hours |
| Drug classes | FDA DailyMed | Full list re-fetched every 6 hours | ~7 hours |
| NDC products and packages | FDA NDC Directory, via rx-dag | rx-dag reloads nightly at 03:00; cash-drugs keeps answers 1 hour | ~1 day after the FDA publishes |
| Product labels (SPL) and label sections | FDA DailyMed | Fetched on first request; kept up to 48 hours after their last refresh | ~2 days |
| Drug info / interaction results | Built from labels | Rebuilt when drug-gate's cached copy expires | Same as labels |
| RxNorm IDs, NDCs, generics, related | NLM RxNorm | Fetched on first request; kept 7–30 days | Up to ~30 days |
| Recalls (enforcement reports) | openFDA | Refreshed daily at 03:00 | ~1 day (internal only, not yet in the public API) |
| Shortages | openFDA | Refreshed daily at 03:00 | ~1 day (internal only, not yet in the public API) |
Notes:
- Popular items can stay in drug-gate's cache longer. Each hit extends its one-hour cache life, so an item requested constantly keeps its cached copy until traffic pauses.
- During a source outage the last good copy keeps being served, so data can be older than the table says. See Reliability.
- Labels change rarely: a few hundred of the roughly 150,000 change on a typical day.