Preventing ajax-jquery loaded external file from caching in IE

Question

Hi you all masters. I need help since 2 days I'm looking all over the internet and couldn't find answer for my problem.

I have this jquery script to call an external file. So far so good. The script is working fine, but as always IE makes what he wants. The external file that I load with this script (weather.php) is a file with real-time weather conditions data in it. Whit this script, I can refresh the div inside which is my weather.php file. And obviously I don't want IE to cache the data in this file. I want when someone click on button "REFRESH", the included page to be reloaded with the new data in it. In IE this doesn't happens because of the cache. How can I change this script to not cache the div's content, or how can I say to my included file (weather.php) to do not cache it self?

This is the script:

function ajax_request() {
$('#column_weather').html('<img src="../images/home/ajax-loader.gif" width="16" height="11" style="vertical-align:middle;"/><b>&nbsp;&nbsp;Loading...</b>');
$('#column_weather').load("../includes/home/weather.php");

} `

And that's how I call the script:

<a href="#" onclick="ajax_request();return false;">Refresh</a>`

Answer 1

Can't you just have proper caching instructions inside this weather.php file (to say not to cache it)

Answer 2

Put a random variable on your query String

$('#column_weather').load("../includes/home/weather.php?myRand=" + guid());

I would make random var return a guid

function s4() {
       return (((1+Math.random())*0x10000)|0).toString(16).substring(1);
}

function() guid{
       return s4()+s4()+"-"+s4()+"-"+s4()+"-"+s4()+"-"+s4()+s4()+s4();
}

Answer 3

I would attach the current date and time as a GET parameter. Internet Explorer (and other browsers) view this information as critical to loading the page, just as any function returns a different value with different parameters. The trick is that you don't have to use the parameter. :)

$('#column_weather').load("../includes/home/weather.php?t=" + date());

Answer 4

Adding a random parameter to the end of the query URL will help, but try adding this to the beginning of weather.php:

<?php 
header('Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT'); 
header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate'); 
header('Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0', FALSE); 
header('Pragma: no-cache'); 
?>