How to reload without cache?

[frankdekker]

Currently the CoreWebView2.Reload method reloads the currently active page preserving the cache state. Is there a way to programmatically reload the page without keeping the cache?

[hunkydoryrepair]

yes, must use CTRL-SHIFT-R to clear without cache, but I can't figure out how to do it in code, either, other than use javascript.

[frankdekker]

Could you give an example how you would reload it via javascript? My current experimentation is to send CTRL+SHIFT+R to the WebView2 window handle, not quite successful so far.

[hunkydoryrepair]

Well, it used to work by doing this:

ctlWebBrowser.ExecuteScriptAsync("window.location.reload(true)");

I find that is no longer sufficient. It reloads the main document but not javascript or css files. The true parameter was never official so chromium must have dropped support for it.

[torgeirf]

We have now had 2 occasions where this feature would be beneficial. First occasion was an unintentional permanent redirect response from the server, and the second case was a corrupt js file. Both of these issues required either:

1. Deleting the user data folder
   or
2. Opening dev tools (guiding the user via phone) and make him disable cache and reload again

Please consider a method to "hard reload" the page programatically.

[mbodm]

Something happened along those lines (since Jan 2022)?

I also have a hard time here, to figure out how i can completely "re-open" a site, in WebView2. Since we have a system that generates CSS and JS, along with HTML and we have to "re-render" this, by refreshing the whole site in WebView2.

The things i tried:

• webView2.Source = new Uri("about:blank"); followed by webView2.Source = new Uri("http://mywebsite.com");
• Above mentioned JS call: await webView2.ExecuteScriptAsync("window.location.reload(true)");
  Info: This does not work in general, i.e. in the console window in Edge browser.
• webView2.Reload();

None of that helped. So i have no clue at the moment, how a WebView2 could do a completely fresh load of a website.

PS: The only thing that works, is to open the browser tools in WebView2 and press CTRL+F5.

[mbodm]

Additional note: I found 1 another "trick" to force a full reload of the site (including CSS and JS), by invalidating the cache:

await webView2.CoreWebView2.Profile.ClearBrowsingDataAsync();
webView2.Reload();

The only other option was sending a CTRL+F5 KeyPress event to the WebView2 container.

Maybe this helps someone coming here for the same questions.

[sln162]

Isn't this clearing the cache for all UDF locations? Isn't it the same as re-designating new UDF addresses? If there are many caches, deleting all cache files may take time.I think it's a loss.

[mbodm]

Good question @sln162

Since in my use case i don’t care much about the UDF, i don’t know, tbh.

[sln162]

Compromise solution:

 var uriStr = webView21.Source.AbsoluteUri;
 
 if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(webView21.Source.Query))
 {
     uriStr += "?t=" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString();
 }
 else if (webView21.Source.Query.Contains("t="))
 {
     uriStr = Regex.Replace(uriStr, "t=([^&]*)", "t=" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString());
 }
 else
 {
     uriStr += "&t=" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString();
 }
 
 webView21.CoreWebView2.Navigate(uriStr);