Refresh Page on Back Click - MVC 4

Question

What would be a simple way to force my ActionResult to always fire when I hit this page? On browser back click, for instance, this will not execute.

Answer 1

You could try the onunload event and ajax:

<script>
   window.onunload = function () {
      $.ajax({
         url: '/ControllerName/Index',
         type: 'POST',
         datatype: "json",
         contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8"
      });
   };
</script>

Answer 2

Disabling cache on the ActionResult forces the page to refresh each time rather than rendering the cached version.

[OutputCacheAttribute(VaryByParam = "*", Duration = 0, NoStore = true)]
public ActionResult Index()
{
    //do something always

    return View();
}

Now when you click the browsers back button, this is hit every time.

Answer 3

Adding this code to my HTML works just fine for me:

<input id="alwaysFetch" type="hidden" />
<script>
    setTimeout(function () {
        var el = document.getElementById('alwaysFetch');
        el.value = el.value ? location.reload() : true;
    }, 0);
</script>

This might come handy for those who prefer not to deal with server side code as opposed to the accepted solution.

All it does is assign a value to a hidden input on first load which will remain on the second load in which case the page is force refreshed.