Prevent Silverlight 3 from caching while debugging

Question

I'm assuming the issue I'm having is related to caching. Code changes I make are not getting picked up when I debug. Most times I get served a previous version of the app. How do I prevent this from happening?

Answer 1

As far as I see, this seems to be a problem with Firefox - when I used IE8, this didn't happen to me (I realize this may open its own can of worms, but at least for debugging and testing Silverlight, IE is much better)

Answer 2

I have not had any issues with Silverlight assemblies getting cached - you might want to try debugging the HTTP requests that go back and forth, to see if maybe your server is instead returning incorrect information to the browser (e.g. a "not modified" response).

For general no-cache behavior, the only reliable method I have found is to turn off caching in the browser.

For IE, this has been the only reliable option - otherwise, even if proper no-cache headers are sent, certain things are still cached (specifically, dynamically loaded resources which are accessed via Javascript XmlHttpRequest). I have not specifically had issues with Silverlight getting cached when it should not, though - IE has always loaded the latest updates even if cache is enabled.

Firefox has been much more problematic - even when disabling cache, it still sometimes caches XmlHttpRequest-loaded resources. Manually hitting Refresh a few times has been the only solution in such a case. Once again, I have had no issues with Silverlight assembles, even if cache is turned on.

Answer 3

In Firefox, I use the 'web developer' plugin and simply select to 'disable cache'. Works fine.

Answer 4

Try to add on the page what hosted SilverLigth appl on Page_Load:

      Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(-100));
      Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);

Answer 5

Ctrl+F5 is an easy way to refresh a page and clear the cache of that page at the same time - it may help :)

Answer 6

Firefox 3.5 under Tools has the option for Private Browsing. Click that to disable caching.

Answer 7

Append a "version" querystring to your XAP Url, something like:

http://localhost:1234/ClientBin/my_silverlight_app.xap?v=1.0.287.5361

This will trick the browser (and many web servers) to think that this is a different file. And when the cache problem appears again, increase the number.

If you then want to employ proper caching, do it on the server-side with OutputCache directives.