Our investigations have shown us that not all browsers respect the HTTP cache directives in a uniform manner.
For security reasons we do not want certain pages in our application to be cached, ever, by the web browser. This must work for at least the following browsers:
Our requirement came from a security test. After logging out from our website you could press the back button and view cached pages.
The correct minimum set of headers that works across all mentioned clients (and proxies):
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0
The Cache-Control is per the HTTP 1.1 spec for clients and proxies (and implicitly required by some clients next to Expires). The Pragma is per the HTTP 1.0 spec for prehistoric clients. The Expires is per the HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 specs for clients and proxies. In HTTP 1.1, the Cache-Control takes precedence over Expires, so it's after all for HTTP 1.0 proxies only.
If you don't care about IE6 and its broken caching when serving pages over HTTPS with only no-store, then you could omit Cache-Control: no-cache.
Cache-Control: no-store, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: 0
If you don't care about IE6 nor HTTP 1.0 clients (HTTP 1.1 was introduced in 1997), then you could omit Pragma.
Cache-Control: no-store, must-revalidate
Expires: 0
If you don't care about HTTP 1.0 proxies either, then you could omit Expires.
Cache-Control: no-store, must-revalidate
On the other hand, if the server auto-includes a valid Date header, then you could theoretically omit Cache-Control too and rely on Expires only.
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 18:32:02 GMT
Expires: 0
But that may fail if e.g. the end-user manipulates the operating system date and the client software is relying on it.
Other Cache-Control parameters such as max-age are irrelevant if the abovementioned Cache-Control parameters are specified. The Last-Modified header as included in most other answers here is only interesting if you actually want to cache the request, so you don't need to specify it at all.
Using PHP:
header("Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"); // HTTP 1.1.
header("Pragma: no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0.
header("Expires: 0"); // Proxies.
Using Java Servlet, or Node.js:
response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"); // HTTP 1.1.
response.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0.
response.setHeader("Expires", "0"); // Proxies.
Using ASP.NET-MVC
Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache); // HTTP 1.1.
Response.Cache.AppendCacheExtension("no-store, must-revalidate");
Response.AppendHeader("Pragma", "no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0.
Response.AppendHeader("Expires", "0"); // Proxies.
Using ASP.NET Web API:
// `response` is an instance of System.Net.Http.HttpResponseMessage
response.Headers.CacheControl = new CacheControlHeaderValue
{
NoCache = true,
NoStore = true,
MustRevalidate = true
};
response.Headers.Pragma.ParseAdd("no-cache");
// We can't use `response.Content.Headers.Expires` directly
// since it allows only `DateTimeOffset?` values.
response.Content?.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation("Expires", 0.ToString());
Using ASP.NET:
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"); // HTTP 1.1.
Response.AppendHeader("Pragma", "no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0.
Response.AppendHeader("Expires", "0"); // Proxies.
Using ASP.NET Core v3
// using Microsoft.Net.Http.Headers
Response.Headers[HeaderNames.CacheControl] = "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate";
Response.Headers[HeaderNames.Expires] = "0";
Response.Headers[HeaderNames.Pragma] = "no-cache";
Using ASP:
Response.addHeader "Cache-Control", "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" ' HTTP 1.1.
Response.addHeader "Pragma", "no-cache" ' HTTP 1.0.
Response.addHeader "Expires", "0" ' Proxies.
Using Ruby on Rails:
headers["Cache-Control"] = "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" # HTTP 1.1.
headers["Pragma"] = "no-cache" # HTTP 1.0.
headers["Expires"] = "0" # Proxies.
Using Python/Flask:
response = make_response(render_template(...))
response.headers["Cache-Control"] = "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" # HTTP 1.1.
response.headers["Pragma"] = "no-cache" # HTTP 1.0.
response.headers["Expires"] = "0" # Proxies.
Using Python/Django:
response["Cache-Control"] = "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" # HTTP 1.1.
response["Pragma"] = "no-cache" # HTTP 1.0.
response["Expires"] = "0" # Proxies.
Using Python/Pyramid:
request.response.headerlist.extend(
(
('Cache-Control', 'no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate'),
('Pragma', 'no-cache'),
('Expires', '0')
)
)
Using Go:
responseWriter.Header().Set("Cache-Control", "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate") // HTTP 1.1.
responseWriter.Header().Set("Pragma", "no-cache") // HTTP 1.0.
responseWriter.Header().Set("Expires", "0") // Proxies.
Using Clojure (require Ring utils):
(require '[ring.util.response :as r])
(-> response
(r/header "Cache-Control" "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate")
(r/header "Pragma" "no-cache")
(r/header "Expires" 0))
Using Apache .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Cache-Control "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"
Header set Pragma "no-cache"
Header set Expires 0
</IfModule>
Using HTML:
<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">
Important to know is that when an HTML page is served over an HTTP connection, and a header is present in both the HTTP response headers and the HTML <meta http-equiv> tags, then the one specified in the HTTP response header will get precedence over the HTML meta tag. The HTML meta tag will only be used when the page is viewed from a local disk file system via a file:// URL. See also W3 HTML spec chapter 5.2.2. Take care with this when you don't specify them programmatically because the webserver can namely include some default values.
Generally, you'd better just not specify the HTML meta tags to avoid confusion by starters and rely on hard HTTP response headers. Moreover, specifically those <meta http-equiv> tags are invalid in HTML5. Only the http-equiv values listed in HTML5 specification are allowed.
To verify the one and the other, you can see/debug them in the HTTP traffic monitor of the web browser's developer toolset. You can get there by pressing F12 in Chrome/Firefox23+/IE9+, and then opening the "Network" or "Net" tab panel, and then clicking the HTTP request of interest to uncover all detail about the HTTP request and response. The below screenshot is from Chrome:
First of all, this question and answer are targeted on "web pages" (HTML pages), not "file downloads" (PDF, zip, Excel, etc). You'd better have them cached and make use of some file version identifier somewhere in the URI path or query string to force a redownload on a changed file. When applying those no-cache headers on file downloads anyway, then beware of the IE7/8 bug when serving a file download over HTTPS instead of HTTP. For detail, see IE cannot download foo.jsf. IE was not able to open this internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found.
I found that all of the answers on this page still had problems. In particular, I noticed that none of them would stop IE8 from using a cached version of the page when you accessed it by hitting the back button.
After much research and testing, I found that the only two headers I really needed were:
Cache-Control: no-store
Vary: *
For an explanation of the Vary header, check out http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html#sec13.6
On IE6-8, FF1.5-3.5, Chrome 2-3, Safari 4, and Opera 9-10, these headers caused the page to be requested from the server when you click on a link to the page, or put the URL directly in the address bar. That covers about 99% of all browsers in use as of Jan '10.
On IE6, and Opera 9-10, hitting the back button still caused the cached version to be loaded. On all other browsers I tested, they did fetch a fresh version from the server. So far, I haven't found any set of headers that will cause those browsers to not return cached versions of pages when you hit the back button.
Update: After writing this answer, I realized that our web server is identifying itself as an HTTP 1.0 server. The headers I've listed are the correct ones in order for responses from an HTTP 1.0 server to not be cached by browsers. For an HTTP 1.1 server, look at BalusC's answer.
After a bit of research we came up with the following list of headers that seemed to cover most browsers:
In ASP.NET we added these using the following snippet:
Response.ClearHeaders();
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache"); //HTTP 1.1
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "private"); // HTTP 1.1
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "no-store"); // HTTP 1.1
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "must-revalidate"); // HTTP 1.1
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "max-stale=0"); // HTTP 1.1
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "post-check=0"); // HTTP 1.1
Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "pre-check=0"); // HTTP 1.1
Response.AppendHeader("Pragma", "no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0
Response.AppendHeader("Expires", "Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"); // HTTP 1.0
Found from: http://forums.asp.net/t/1013531.aspx
The use of the pragma header in the response is a wives tale. RFC2616 only defines it as a request header
DISCLAIMER: I strongly suggest reading @BalusC's answer. After reading the following caching tutorial: http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/ (I recommend you read it, too), I believe it to be correct. However, for historical reasons (and because I have tested it myself), I will include my original answer below:
I tried the 'accepted' answer for PHP, which did not work for me. Then I did a little research, found a slight variant, tested it, and it worked. Here it is:
header('Cache-Control: no-store, private, no-cache, must-revalidate'); // HTTP/1.1
header('Cache-Control: pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0, max-stale = 0', false); // HTTP/1.1
header('Pragma: public');
header('Expires: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT'); // Date in the past
header('Expires: 0', false);
header('Last-Modified: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT');
header ('Pragma: no-cache');
That should work. The problem was that when setting the same part of the header twice, if the false is not sent as the second argument to the header function, header function will simply overwrite the previous header() call. So, when setting the Cache-Control, for example if one does not want to put all the arguments in one header() function call, he must do something like this:
header('Cache-Control: this');
header('Cache-Control: and, this', false);
See more complete documentation here.
These directives does not mitigate any security risk. They are really intended to force UA's to refresh volatile information, not keep UA's from being retaining information. See this similar question. At the very least, there is no guarantee that any routers, proxies, etc. will not ignore the caching directives as well.
On a more positive note, policies regarding physical access to computers, software installation, and the like will put you miles ahead of most firms in terms of security. If the consumers of this information are members of the public, the only thing you can really do is help them understand that once the information hits their machine, that machine is their responsibility, not yours.
Setting the modified http header to some date in 1995 usually does the trick.
Here's an example:
Expires: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT Last-Modified: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 04:58:08 GMT Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
The RFC for HTTP 1.1 says the proper method is to add an HTTP Header for:
Cache-Control: no-cache
Older browsers may ignore this if they are not properly compliant to HTTP 1.1. For those you can try the header:
Pragma: no-cache
This is also supposed to work for HTTP 1.1 browsers.
The PHP documentation for the header function has a rather complete example (contributed by a third party):
header('Pragma: public');
header("Expires: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"); // Date in the past
header('Last-Modified: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s') . ' GMT');
header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate'); // HTTP/1.1
header('Cache-Control: pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0', false); // HTTP/1.1
header ("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: 0", false);
I've had best and most consistent results across all browsers by setting Pragma: no-cache
In addition to the headers consider serving your page via https. Many browsers will not cache https by default.
i have solved in this way.
2 considerations:
1) the server side events are not fired on back click, instead of javascript.
2) i have 2 javascript to read/write cookies
function setCookie(name, value, days)
{
var expires = "";
if (days)
{
var date = new Date();
date.setTime(date.getTime() + (days * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000));
expires = "; expires=" + date.toUTCString();
}
document.cookie = name + "=" + (value || "") + expires + "; path=/";
}
function getCookie(name)
{
var nameEQ = name + "=";
var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
for (var i = ca.length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
{
var c = ca[i];
while (c.charAt(0) == ' ')
{
c = c.substring(1, c.length);
}
if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0)
{
return c.substring(nameEQ.length, c.length);
}
}
return null;
}
in my Page_Load i inserted this: (this is NOT fired on back click)
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Page.RegisterClientScriptBlock("", "<script>setCookie('" + Session.SessionID + "', '" + Login + "', '100');</script>");
}
where 'Login' is my id value that is -1 after logout (you could use something else, a boolean for example).
then in my page i added this: (this IS fired on back click)
<script type="text/javascript">
if (getCookie('<%= Session.SessionID %>') < 0)
{
if (history.length > 0)
{
history.go(+1);
}
}
</script>
nothing else.
with this solution back click is enable on every page and disable only after logout on each page on the same browser.
you can use location block for set individual file instead of whole app get caching in IIS
<location path="index.html">
<system.webServer>
<httpProtocol>
<customHeaders>
<add name="Cache-Control" value="no-cache" />
</customHeaders>
</httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>
</location>
Not sure if my answer sounds simple and stupid, and perhaps it has already been known to you since long time ago, but since preventing someone from using browser back button to view your historical pages is one of your goals, you can use:
window.location.replace("https://www.example.com/page-not-to-be-viewed-in-browser-history-back-button.html");
Of course, this may not be possible to be implemented across the entire site, but at least for some critical pages, you can do that. Hope this helps.