How to prevent browser page caching in Rails

Use:

expires_now()

expires_now()

I have used this line with some success in the controller. It works in Safari and Internet Explorer, but I haven't seen it work with Firefox.

response.headers["Expires"] = "#{1.year.ago}"

For your second point, if you use the Ruby on Rails helper methods like

stylesheet_link_tag

and leave the default settings on your web server, the assets are typically cached pretty well.

I finally figured this out - http://blog.serendeputy.com/posts/how-to-prevent-browsers-from-caching-a-page-in-rails/ in application_controller.rb.

After Ruby on Rails 5:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  before_action :set_cache_headers

  private

  def set_cache_headers
    response.headers["Cache-Control"] = "no-cache, no-store"
    response.headers["Pragma"] = "no-cache"
    response.headers["Expires"] = "Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT"
  end
end

Ruby on Rails 4 and older versions:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  before_filter :set_cache_headers

  private

  def set_cache_headers
    response.headers["Cache-Control"] = "no-cache, no-store"
    response.headers["Pragma"] = "no-cache"
    response.headers["Expires"] = "Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT"
  end
end