How to programmatically clear outputcache for controller action method

Question

If the controller action has the OutputCache attribute specified on an action, is there anyway to clear the outputcache without having to restart IIS?

[OutputCache (Duration=3600,VaryByParam="param1;param2")]
public string AjaxHtmlOutputMethod(string param1, string param2)
{
  var someModel = SomeModel.Find( param1, param2 );

  //set up ViewData
  ...

  return RenderToString( "ViewName", someModel );
}

I'm looking at using HttpResponse.RemoveOutputCacheItem(string path) to clear it, but I'm having trouble figuring out what the path should be to map it to the action method. I'm going to try again with the aspx page that is rendered by ViewName.

Possibly I'll just manually insert the output of RenderToString into the HttpContext.Cache instead if I can't figure this one out.

Update

Please note that the OutputCache is VaryByParam, and testing out a hardcoded path "/controller/action" does not actually clear the outputcache, so it looks like it has to match "/controller/action/param1/param2".

That means I'll probably have to revert to object level caching and manually cache the output for RenderToString() :(

Answer 1

Try this:

var urlToRemove = Url.Action("AjaxHtmlOutputMethod", "Controller");
Response.RemoveOutputCacheItem(urlToRemove);

http://www.dotnetmonster.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/asp-net-caching/230/RemoveOutputCacheItem-question

UPDATED:

var requestContext = new System.Web.Routing.RequestContext(
    new HttpContextWrapper(System.Web.HttpContext.Current),
    new System.Web.Routing.RouteData());

var Url = new UrlHelper(requestContext);

UPDATED:

Try this:

[OutputCache(Location="Server", Duration=3600,VaryByParam="param1;param2")]

Otherwise the cache deletion won't work because you've cached the HTML output on the user's machine

Answer 2

Another option is to use VaryByCustom for the OutputCache and handle the invalidation of certain cache elements there.

Maybe it works for you, but it's not a general solution to your problem

Answer 3

I think correct flow is:

filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Cache.SetNoStore()