Output Cache is one of the most useful features of ASP.NET and plays a key role for making high performance web applications. It’s very easy to use this feature. Just put OutputCache attribute on any controller/action or you can set outputCacheSettings attribute in web.config. ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API are two technologies that looks very similar when we work with them. They have similar concepts like Controller, Action, routing etc and work almost in similar way except one returns View and returns data in JSON/XML format.

Recently in an application, I was required to cache some web api calls so I put the OutputCache attribute over the Web API action but when I ran it was not working. The data was not getting cached and on every request, it was going to server and further fetching data from database and returning the same. Then to verify the attribute, I put the same attribute over a MVC action and it was working like a charm. So I felt that it looks like that this attribute is not working. Continue reading →