Why is my MVC app caching this setting?

Question

I have an Email-listening application that handles incoming mails, depending on the "Bucket" (or Queue) the emails are in. One of the settings for each bucket is "AutoRespond". If AutoRespond is true, I send a confirmation email back to the sender.

However, when I change the AutoRespond setting, it doesn't seem to be taking effect. I'm familiar w/ setting OutputCache on a controller, but this logic below is from my Email-listening service cs file.

if (myObject.Bucket.AutoRespond)
{
    SendEmailConfirmation(someArgs);
}

This if statement is still evaluating as True, even though I can see it set to False in the database. If I restart my Email-listening service, all is well, and this if statement evaluates correctly. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Probably the problem is that settings are read from the database just when the application starts...then probably they are stored in a static variable or in the application state dictionary. If this is the case, you may solve it by writing an admin page that after having changed the settings, forces to reload the settings from the database.

Answer 2

You can also try a web.config app setting, changing the value automatically restarts the app (not sure if that's practical or not for you but another option nonetheless)

web.config:

<appSettings>
    <add key="AutoRespond" value="true" />
</appSettings>

c# logic here:

bool autoRespond = false;
bool.TryParse(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AutoRespond"], out autoRespond);