No cache with HttpClient in Windows Phone 8

Question

I\'ve read that in order to disable caching while using get and post methods in HttpClient, I need to use a WebRequestHandler as my HttpClien

Answer 1

It's not possible to reference regular .NET assemblies in a Windows Phone 8 project. You can only use the .NET API for Windows Phone. This is a subset of regular .NET. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj207211%28v=vs.105%29.aspx for more info.

The default caching of HttpClient (and HttpWebRequest) can be worked around by appending a value to the query string. For example, a guid.

string uri = "http://host/path?cache=" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

A better solution, like pointed out in the comment above, is to set the "If-Modified-Since" header. HttpWebRequest has it built in:

HttpWebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.CreateHttp(url);
if (request.Headers == null)
    request.Headers = new WebHeaderCollection();
// Make sure that you format time string according RFC.
// Otherwise setting header value will give ArgumentException for culture like 'ti-ER'
request.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.IfModifiedSince] = DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("r"); 

But you could add the header manually using an HttpClient I guess.