Should a cache tag only render array for an otherwise empty block work?

Question

I have a custom blocks that displays results based on an entity query. For some pages the correct result is blank, and I want to hide the block.

When a return an empty array from the block's build() method it appears to cache more or less forever.

If I return a render array that just contains #cache values will that get honored, or will the lack of content invalidate those tags some place another the way?

if (empty($relatedContent)) {
  return [
    '#cache' => [
      'contexts' => ['url'],
      'tags' => ['node_list'],
    ],
  ];
}

For what it's worth, I've been testing the idea and I'm running into issues, but it's not clear yet if that's related to this or some other problem.

Answer 1

You are right about this, you need content (in form of a render element) for the cache metadata to be recognized. But you don't need to worry about this, because BlockViewBuilder detects an empty block and adds a markup render element with an empty string:

public static function preRender($build) {
    ...
    if ($content !== NULL && !Element::isEmpty($content)) {
      ...
    }
    else {
      // Abort rendering: render as the empty string and ensure this block is
      // render cached, so we can avoid the work of having to repeatedly
      // determine whether the block is empty. For instance, modifying or adding
      // entities could cause the block to no longer be empty.
      $build = [
        '#markup' => '',
        '#cache' => $build['#cache'],
      ];
      ...