Output caching for an ApiController (MVC4 Web API)

Question

I'm trying to cache the output of an ApiController method in Web API.

Here's the controller code:

public class TestController : ApiController {     [OutputCache(Duration = 10, VaryByParam = "none", Location = OutputCacheLocation.Any)]     public string Get()     {         return System.DateTime.Now.ToString();     } } 

N.B. I'd also tried the OutputCache attribute on the controller itself, as well as several combinations of its parameters.

The route is registered in Global.asax:

namespace WebApiTest {     public class Global : HttpApplication     {         protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute("default", routeTemplate: "{controller}");         }     } } 

I get a successful response, but it's not cached anywhere:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: no-cache Pragma: no-cache Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8 Expires: -1 Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:56:17 GMT Content-Length: 96  <string xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">18/07/2012 18:56:17</string> 

I was not able to find documentation for output caching in Web API.

Is this a limitation of the Web API in MVC4 or am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

WebAPI does not have any built in support for the [OutputCache] attribute. Take a look at this article to see how you could implement this feature yourself.