Clearing UIWebview cache

Question

I have used UIWebview to load a web page using loadRequest: method, when I leave that scene I call [self.webView stopLoading]; and release the webView.

In activity monitor on first launch i have seen that the real memory increased by 4MB, and on multiple launches/loading the real memory doesn't increase. It is increasing only once.

I have checked the retain count of webview. It is proper i.e., 0. I think UIWebView is caching some data. How do I avoid caching or remove cached data? Or is there another reason for this?

Answer 1

I actually think it may retain cached information when you close out the UIWebView. I've tried removing a UIWebView from my UIViewController, releasing it, then creating a new one. The new one remembered exactly where I was at when I went back to an address without having to reload everything (it remembered my previous UIWebView was logged in).

So a couple of suggestions:

[[NSURLCache sharedURLCache] removeCachedResponseForRequest:NSURLRequest];

This would remove a cached response for a specific request. There is also a call that will remove all cached responses for all requests ran on the UIWebView:

[[NSURLCache sharedURLCache] removeAllCachedResponses];

After that, you can try deleting any associated cookies with the UIWebView:

for(NSHTTPCookie *cookie in [[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] cookies]) {

    if([[cookie domain] isEqualToString:someNSStringUrlDomain]) {

        [[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] deleteCookie:cookie];
    }
}

Swift 3:

// Remove all cache 
URLCache.shared.removeAllCachedResponses()

// Delete any associated cookies     
if let cookies = HTTPCookieStorage.shared.cookies {
    for cookie in cookies {
        HTTPCookieStorage.shared.deleteCookie(cookie)
    }
}