How can I force window.location to make an HTTP request instead of using the cache?

Question

In my web application I am setting window.location to navigate to a different page, but for some reason Firefox shows an old version of that page.

Using Firebug I detected that the browser doesn't even send an HTTP request, it simply uses an older version of that page (not even the last one) and displays it.

The page itself has all the usual headers to prevent caching which works perfectly when I browse my pages using links or manual input. The problem only occurs when seting window.location.

Is this a Firefox problem or something to expect from any browser? Can this behaviour be changed?

Answer 1

You could just add a random parameter to the page URL in order to have the browser issue a new request.

So instead of using

 window.location = "my.url/index.html";

use

 window.location = "my.url/index.html?nocache=" + (new Date()).getTime();

Answer 2

You can use location.reload with a true argument, which will always bypass the cache.

window.location.reload(true);