Prevent PDFViewer from saving anything local

[Tommy]

I would like to ensure that no trace of the PDF is saved to the local machine in any kind of cache etc.
Is this how the PDFViewer works?

[Stoyan]

Hi Tommy,

The PDFViewer doesn't require the browser to cache any part of the pdf files that it load and visualizes.

Therefore whether the files are cached or not is in the domain of the browser.

You may find this StackOverflow thread useful where it's discussed how you can configure your pages to instruct the browser not to cache their resources.

I hope the information above is useful.

Regards,
Stoyan
Progress Telerik

[Tommy]

Hmmmm so no real reliable way of making the PDFViewer not cache anything locally.
We are trying to ensure that sensitive documents are not stored anywhere in a cache...

[Stoyan]

Hi Tommy, 

There is a way to make pdf files not cached locally.

One approach is to use the PDFViewer's DPL processing which processes the rendering of the pdf on the server and sent a response a byte array. More information on the configuration is available at the PDFViewer DPL Demo.

Alternatively, you need to ensure a page that contains the PDFViewer isn't cached by the browser. You can achieve this by configuring the following attributes of the Action method responsible for routing:

[HttpGet]
[ResponseCache(Location = ResponseCacheLocation.None, NoStore = true)]
public ActionResult SampleView()
{
    return View("PDFViewerPage");
}

More information on the caching is available at the official Microsoft documentation article about Response Caching.


Please give these options a try and let me know whether they have helped in achieving the desired outcome.