Caching ( Asp.net MVC )

Caching in Asp.net MVC applications provides facility to cache the output of controllers and improve your application performance to many times.The output cache enables you to cache the content returned by a controller action.
There are you ways to use output cache in your asp.net mvc applications :

1. Declare on the top of the action ( or controller which will be applied on all actions inside it )
2. Create Cache Profile ( define caching section inside web.config of your application)

Declare on top of controller or action:
 You can specify cache for an action or controller by writing this line on the top of it , like this ,

OutputCache(Duration=30, varyByParam="none" , Locaiton=OutputCacheLocationClient, NoStore=true)]


You can set the Location property to any one of the following values:

· Any
· Client
· Downstream
· Server
· None
· ServerAndClient

Creating Cache Profile:

Define profile inside of system.web section of your web.config like this :

<caching>
<outputCacheSettings>
    <outputCacheProfiles>
        <add name="myCache" duration="3600" varyByParam="none"/>
    </outputCacheProfiles>
</outputCacheSettings>
</caching>

And you can then use this profile like that :

        [OutputCache(CacheProfile="myCache")]
        public string Index()
        {
            return DateTime.Now.ToString("T");
        }
 

In both of above cases "varyByParam" is a very important parameter , this actually enables us to create different cache versions of the same view ( request ) , for example on the basis of user id we are differentiating out views , so in that case we can set varyByParam to id so that different versions of cache are available for different users accordingly , very dynamic and easy solution.
For further reading you can go to : "http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/older-versions/controllers-and-routing/improving-performance-with-output-caching-cs".