How to prevent browser page caching in Rails

Question

Ubuntu -> Apache -> Phusion Passenger -> Rails 2.3

The main part of my site reacts to your clicks. So, if you click on a link, it will send you on to the destination, and instantly regenerate your page.

But, if you hit the back button, you don't see the new page. Unfortunately, it's not showing up without a manual refresh; it appears the browser is caching it. I want to make sure the browser does not cache the page.

Separately, I do want to set far-future expiration dates for all my static assets.

What's the best way to solve this? Should I solve this in Rails? Apache? Javascript?

Thanks for all your help, Jason

---

Alas. Neither of these suggestions forced the behavior I'm looking for.

Maybe there's a javascript answer? I could have rails write out a timestamp in a comment, then have the javascript check to see if the times are within five seconds (or whatever works). If yes, then fine, but if no, then reload the page?

Do you think this would work?

Thanks for all your help,

Jason

Answer 1

Finally figured this out - http://blog.serendeputy.com/posts/how-to-prevent-browsers-from-caching-a-page-in-rails/ in application_controller.rb

After Rails 5:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  before_action :set_cache_headers

  private

  def set_cache_headers
    response.headers["Cache-Control"] = "no-cache, no-store"
    response.headers["Pragma"] = "no-cache"
    response.headers["Expires"] = "Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT"
  end
end

Rails 4 and older versions:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  before_filter :set_cache_headers

  private

  def set_cache_headers
    response.headers["Cache-Control"] = "no-cache, no-store"
    response.headers["Pragma"] = "no-cache"
    response.headers["Expires"] = "Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT"
  end
end