How do you set cache headers in Spring MVC?

Question

In an annotation-based Spring MVC controller, what is the preferred way to set cache headers for a specific path?

Answer 1

In your controller, you can set response headers directly.

response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate");
response.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache");
response.setDateHeader("Expires", 0);

Answer 2

I found WebContentInterceptor to be the easiest way to go.

@Override
public void addInterceptors(InterceptorRegistry registry)
{
    WebContentInterceptor interceptor = new WebContentInterceptor();
    interceptor.addCacheMapping(CacheControl.noCache(), "/users", "admin");
    registry.addInterceptor(interceptor);
}

Answer 3

org.springframework.web.servlet.support.WebContentGenerator, which is the base class for all Spring controllers has quite a few methods dealing with cache headers:

/* Set whether to use the HTTP 1.1 cache-control header. Default is "true".
 * <p>Note: Cache headers will only get applied if caching is enabled
 * (or explicitly prevented) for the current request. */
public final void setUseCacheControlHeader();

/* Return whether the HTTP 1.1 cache-control header is used. */
public final boolean isUseCacheControlHeader();

/* Set whether to use the HTTP 1.1 cache-control header value "no-store"
 * when preventing caching. Default is "true". */
public final void setUseCacheControlNoStore(boolean useCacheControlNoStore);

/* Cache content for the given number of seconds. Default is -1,
 * indicating no generation of cache-related headers.
 * Only if this is set to 0 (no cache) or a positive value (cache for
 * this many seconds) will this class generate cache headers.
 * The headers can be overwritten by subclasses, before content is generated. */
public final void setCacheSeconds(int seconds);

They can either be invoked within your controller prior to content generation or specified as bean properties in Spring context.

Answer 4

You could extend AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter to look for a custom cache control annotation and set the http headers accordingly.