Better Way to Prevent IE Cache in AngularJS?

Question

I currently use service/$resource to make ajax calls (GET in this case), and IE caches the calls so that fresh data cannot be retrieved from the server. I have used a technique I found by googling to create a random number and append it to the request, so that IE will not go to cache for the data.

Is there a better way than adding the cacheKill to every request?

factory code

.factory('UserDeviceService', function ($resource) {

        return $resource('/users/:dest', {}, {
            query: {method: 'GET', params: {dest: "getDevicesByUserID"}, isArray: true }
        });

Call from the controller

$scope.getUserDevices = function () {
        UserDeviceService.query({cacheKill: new Date().getTime()},function (data) {
            //logic
        });
    }

Answer 1

As described in one of my other posts, you could disable caching globally in the $httpProvider:

myModule.config(['$httpProvider', function($httpProvider) {
    //initialize get if not there
    if (!$httpProvider.defaults.headers.get) {
        $httpProvider.defaults.headers.get = {};    
    }    

    // Answer edited to include suggestions from comments
    // because previous version of code introduced browser-related errors

    //disable IE ajax request caching
    $httpProvider.defaults.headers.get['If-Modified-Since'] = 'Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT';
    // extra
    $httpProvider.defaults.headers.get['Cache-Control'] = 'no-cache';
    $httpProvider.defaults.headers.get['Pragma'] = 'no-cache';
}]);

Answer 2

As binarygiant requested I am posting my comment as an answer. I have solved this problem by adding No-Cache headers to the response on server side. Note that you have to do this for GET requests only, other requests seems to work fine.

binarygiant posted how you can do this on node/express. You can do it in ASP.NET MVC like this:

[OutputCache(NoStore = true, Duration = 0, VaryByParam = "None")]
public ActionResult Get()
{
    // return your response
}

Answer 3

For those using ASP.NET Web API 2 the equivalent solution would be this (Web API does not use same caching logic as MVC):

public class NoCacheHeaderFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuted(HttpActionExecutedContext actionExecutedContext)
    {
        if (actionExecutedContext.Response != null) // can be null when exception happens
        {
            actionExecutedContext.Response.Headers.CacheControl =
                new CacheControlHeaderValue { NoCache = true, NoStore = true, MustRevalidate = true };
            actionExecutedContext.Response.Headers.Pragma.Add(new NameValueHeaderValue("no-cache"));

            if (actionExecutedContext.Response.Content != null) // can be null (for example HTTP 400)
            {
                actionExecutedContext.Response.Content.Headers.Expires = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow;
            }
         }
    }
}

then attach it in WebApiConfig.cs:

public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
{
    ....
    config.Filters.Add(new NoCacheHeaderFilter());

    config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
        name: "DefaultApi",
        routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
        defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
    );
}