Disable caching on a partial view in MVC 3

Question

I have an issue with a partial View being cached when it shouldn't be. This partial View is used to display the Logon/Logoff on a page. It uses the simple code below to figure out which link to display

@if(Request.IsAuthenticated) {         <a href="@Url.Action("LogOff", "Account", new { area = "" })">Log Off</a>  } else {     <a href="@Url.Action("LogOn", "Account", new { area = "" })">Log On</a> } 

This partial View is called from with all pages in my MVC3 application, using

@Html.Partial("_HeaderView")   

In most of my controllers, I have the output cache defined, so I can take advantage of caching my content.

[OutputCache(Duration = 86400, VaryByParam = "*")] 

Now my issue is that the entire page is being cached when I don't want the partial view to be. This is causing wrong behavior where in it sometimes displays LogOff even if the user is not logged in etc. Is there a way to cache all the content, except for the partial view in question?

Answer 1

You can disable caching by decorating the controller which displays your _HeaderView partial with the following:

[OutputCache(NoStore = true, Duration = 0, VaryByParam = "*")] public ActionResult HeaderView() {     return PartialView("_HeaderView"); } 

Answer 2

What you are looking for is called Donut Caching. Here's a great article explaining what it is and how to make it work http://www.devtrends.co.uk/blog/donut-output-caching-in-asp.net-mvc-3