I use retrofit and okhttp in one of our applications.
I can't really find a good explanation for the default behaviour of Retrofit.
If Okhttp is on the class path it will be automatically used. But as far as I can see it the default HttpResponseCache is null.
Do I need to explicitly enable caching with Retrofit and Okhttp?
You should manually create your OkHttpClient and configure it how you like. In this case you should install a cache. Once you have that create an OkClient and pass it to Retrofit's RestAdapter.Builder
Also, no caching for HTTP POST requests. GETs will be cached, however.
Correct implementation for OkHttpClient v2:
int cacheSize = 10 * 1024 * 1024; // 10 MiB
File cacheDir = new File(context.getCacheDir(), "HttpCache");
Cache cache = new Cache(cacheDir, cacheSize);
OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient.Builder()
.cache(cache)
.build();
see documentation
DEPRECATED for OkHttpClient v2.0.0 and higher
As Jesse Wilson pointed out you need to create your own cache.
The following code should create a 10MB cache.
File httpCacheDirectory = new File(application.getApplicationContext()
.getCacheDir().getAbsolutePath(), "HttpCache");
HttpResponseCache httpResponseCache = null;
try {
httpResponseCache = new HttpResponseCache(httpCacheDirectory, 10 * 1024);
} catch (IOException e) {
Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(), "Could not create http cache", e);
}
OkHttpClient okHttpClient = new OkHttpClient();
okHttpClient.setResponseCache(httpResponseCache);
builder.setClient(new OkClient(okHttpClient));
The code is based on Jesse Wilsons example on Github.