ChildActionOnly output cache not disabled

Question

I have the following Action in a controller marked with [ChildActionOnly]:

[OutputCache(Duration = 3600)]
public PartialViewResult SideNavigation()
{
    SideNavigationModel model = _sideNavigationFactory.GetSideNavigation();

    if (model != null)
    {
        return PartialView(model);
    }

    return default(PartialViewResult);
}

Which works fine when I call it with:

@Html.Action("SideNavigation", "Template")

In my main template. However I have noticed that when I update the cshtml file of the side navigation, it does not update on the webpage even though my output caching is disabled in the web.config:

<outputCache enableOutputCache="false">

If I change the main template this is on, that will update but the navigation part of the template won't. Is this expected behaviour? If so is there a way to output cache it only when output caching is enabled?

You can work with outputCacheProfiles : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/mvc/overview/older-versions-1/controllers-and-routing/improving-performance-with-output-caching-cs — Laurent Lequenne, Sep 17 '19 at 13:17
@LaurentLequenne can't use a profile on a child only action: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4728958/caching-childactions-using-cache-profiles-wont-work — Pete, Sep 17 '19 at 13:17
Ok so if you look at the other answers of that issue, it's says you can use a custom attribute. I didn't try on a child action, but it's working fine on controllers... — Laurent Lequenne, Sep 17 '19 at 13:27
That has the same issue - doesn't pay attention to the disabling in the web.config. All the custom attribute does is assign the values from the cache profile — Pete, Sep 17 '19 at 13:32
But in your custom attribute you can read the disabled value in the configuration and apply or not the caching :-) — Laurent Lequenne, Sep 17 '19 at 13:39

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 17 '19 at 13:42

using System.Web.Configuration;
using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace Mvc.Filters
{
    public class ExtendedOutputCacheAttribute : OutputCacheAttribute
    {
        public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
        {
            if (!web.config.caching.disabled) // just read the right config setting somewhere 
            {
               base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
            }
        }
    }
}

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 17 '19 at 15:03

Thanks to a mixture of the this answer and the answer provided by Laurent, I have come up with the following solution using a custom attribute:

public class ChildActionOutputCacheAttribute : OutputCacheAttribute
{
    private const string _cachingSection = "system.web/caching/";
    private const string _outputCacheSection = "outputCache";
    private const string _profileSection = "outputCacheSettings";
    private bool _profileEnabled;

    public ChildActionOutputCacheAttribute(string cacheProfile)
    {
        // get output cache section of web config
        OutputCacheSection settings = (OutputCacheSection)WebConfigurationManager.GetSection($"{_cachingSection}{_outputCacheSection}");

        // check section exists and caching is enabled
        if (settings != null && settings.EnableOutputCache)
        {
            // if caching enabled, get profile
            OutputCacheSettingsSection profileSettings = (OutputCacheSettingsSection)WebConfigurationManager.GetSection($"{_cachingSection}{_profileSection}");
            OutputCacheProfile profile = profileSettings.OutputCacheProfiles[cacheProfile];

            if (profile != null && profile.Enabled)
            {
                // if profile exits set profile params
                Duration = profile.Duration;
                VaryByParam = profile.VaryByParam;
                VaryByCustom = profile.VaryByCustom;

                _profileEnabled = true;           // set profile enable to true as output cache is turned on and there is a profile
            }
        }
    }

    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        if (_profileEnabled)
        {
            // only run this if caching has been set and is enabled
            base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
        }
    }
}

This can then been added to the child action controller using the following:

[ChildActionOutputCache(CacheProfile.Long)]

If you have the following sections in your web.config:

<system.web>
  <caching>
    <outputCache enableOutputCache="false"></outputCache>
    <outputCacheSettings>
      <outputCacheProfiles>
        <add name="Long" duration="86400" varyByParam="*" varyByHeader="none" location="Server" />
      </outputCacheProfiles>
    </outputCacheSettings>
  </caching>
</system.web>

Are you sure that you reuse the complete code that is in the constructor of OutputCacheAttribute ? :-) — Laurent Lequenne, Nov 05 '19 at 14:29

ChildActionOnly output cache not disabled

2 Answers2