ASP.NET MVC how to disable automatic caching option?

How to disable automatic browser caching from asp.Net mvc application?

Because I am having a problem with caching as it caches all links. But sometimes it redirected to DEFAULT INDEX PAGE automatically which stored it caching and then all the time I click to that link it will redirect me to DEFAULT INDEX PAGE.

So some one know how to manually disable caching option from ASP.NET MVC 4?

You can use the OutputCacheAttribute to control server and/or browser caching for specific actions or all actions in a controller.

Disable for all actions in a controller

[OutputCacheAttribute(VaryByParam = "*", Duration = 0, NoStore = true)] // will be applied to all actions in MyController, unless those actions override with their own decoration
public class MyController : Controller
{
  // ... 
}

Disable for a specific action:

public class MyController : Controller
{
    [OutputCacheAttribute(VaryByParam = "*", Duration = 0, NoStore = true)] // will disable caching for Index only
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
       return View();
    }
} 

If you want to apply a default caching strategy to all actions in all controllers, you can add a global action filter by editing your global.asax.cs and looking for the RegisterGlobalFilters method. This method is added in the default MVC application project template.

public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)
{
    filters.Add(new OutputCacheAttribute
                    {
                        VaryByParam = "*",
                        Duration = 0,
                        NoStore = true,
                    });
    // the rest of your global filters here
}

This will cause it to apply the OutputCacheAttribute specified above to every action, which will disable server and browser caching. You should still be able to override this no-cache by adding OutputCacheAttribute to specific actions and controllers.

HackedByChinese is missing the point. He mistook server cache with client cache. OutputCacheAttribute controls server cache (IIS http.sys cache), not browsers (clients) cache.

I give you a very small part of my codebase. Use it wisely.

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method | AttributeTargets.Class)]
public sealed class NoCacheAttribute : FilterAttribute, IResultFilter
{
    public void OnResultExecuting(ResultExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
    }

    public void OnResultExecuted(ResultExecutedContext filterContext)
    {
        var cache = filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cache;
        cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);
        cache.SetRevalidation(HttpCacheRevalidation.ProxyCaches);
        cache.SetExpires(DateTime.Now.AddYears(-5));
        cache.AppendCacheExtension("private");
        cache.AppendCacheExtension("no-cache=Set-Cookie");
        cache.SetProxyMaxAge(TimeSpan.Zero);
    }
}

Usage:

/// will be applied to all actions in MyController
[NoCache]
public class MyController : Controller
{
    // ... 
}

Use it wisely as it really disables all client cache. The only cache not disabled is the "back button" browser cache. But is seems there is really no way to get around it. Maybe only by using javascript to detect it and force page or page zones refresh.

We can set cache profile in the Web.config file instead of setting cache values individually in pages to avoid redundant code. We can refer the profile by using the CacheProfile property of the OutputCache attribute. This cache profile will be applied to all pages unless the page/method overrides these settings.

<system.web>
  <caching>
    <outputCacheSettings>
      <outputCacheProfiles>
        <add name="CacheProfile" duration="60" varyByParam="*" />
      </outputCacheProfiles>
    </outputCacheSettings>
  </caching>
</system.web>

And if you want to disable the caching from your particular action or controller, you can override the config cache settings by decorating that specific action method like shown below:

[OutputCache(NoStore = true, Duration = 0, VaryByParam = "*")]
public ActionResult NoCachingRequired()
{
    return PartialView("abcd");
}

Hope this is clear and is useful to you.

If you want to prevent browser caching, you can use this code from ShareFunction

public override void OnResultExecuting(ResultExecutingContext filterContext)
{
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(-1));
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cache.SetValidUntilExpires(false);
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cache.SetRevalidation(HttpCacheRevalidation.AllCaches);
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cache.SetNoStore();

        base.OnResultExecuting(filterContext);
}

For on page solution ,Set this in your layout page :

<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0">

To make my answer visible to all, I move my comment to answer for this question.

<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate">
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0">

This will work in all browsers (IE, Firefox and Chrome as well). Happy to hear my answer worked for you @Joseph Katzman