How do you set cache headers in Spring MVC?

I just encountered the same problem, and found a good solution already provided by the framework. The org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.WebContentInterceptor class allows you to define default caching behaviour, plus path-specific overrides (with the same path-matcher behaviour used elsewhere). The steps for me were:

1. Ensure my instance of org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter does not have the "cacheSeconds" property set.

2. Add an instance of WebContentInterceptor:

   <mvc:interceptors>...<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.WebContentInterceptor" p:cacheSeconds="0" p:alwaysUseFullPath="true" >    <property name="cacheMappings">        <props>            <!-- cache for one month -->            <prop key="/cache/me/**">2592000</prop>            <!-- don't set cache headers -->            <prop key="/cache/agnostic/**">-1</prop>        </props>    </property></bean>...</mvc:interceptors>

After these changes, responses under /foo included headers to discourage caching, responses under /cache/me included headers to encourage caching, and responses under /cache/agnostic included no cache-related headers.

If using a pure Java configuration:

@EnableWebMvc@Configurationpublic class WebMvcConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {  /* Time, in seconds, to have the browser cache static resources (one week). */  private static final int BROWSER_CACHE_CONTROL = 604800;  @Override  public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {    registry     .addResourceHandler("/images/**")     .addResourceLocations("/images/")     .setCachePeriod(BROWSER_CACHE_CONTROL);  }}

See also: http://docs.spring.io/spring-security/site/docs/current/reference/html/headers.html

The answer is quite simple:

@Controllerpublic class EmployeeController {
    @RequestMapping(value = "/find/employer/{employerId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)    public List getEmployees(@PathVariable("employerId") Long employerId, final HttpServletResponse response) {        response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache");        return employeeService.findEmployeesForEmployer(employerId);    }
}

org.springframework.web.servlet.support.WebContentGenerator, which is the base class for all Spring controllers has quite a few methods dealing with cache headers:

/* Set whether to use the HTTP 1.1 cache-control header. Default is "true". * <p>Note: Cache headers will only get applied if caching is enabled * (or explicitly prevented) for the current request. */public final void setUseCacheControlHeader();/* Return whether the HTTP 1.1 cache-control header is used. */public final boolean isUseCacheControlHeader();/* Set whether to use the HTTP 1.1 cache-control header value "no-store" * when preventing caching. Default is "true". */public final void setUseCacheControlNoStore(boolean useCacheControlNoStore);/* Cache content for the given number of seconds. Default is -1, * indicating no generation of cache-related headers. * Only if this is set to 0 (no cache) or a positive value (cache for * this many seconds) will this class generate cache headers. * The headers can be overwritten by subclasses, before content is generated. */public final void setCacheSeconds(int seconds);

They can either be invoked within your controller prior to content generation or specified as bean properties in Spring context.