asp.net - ASP .Net Web API downloading images as binary

Question

I want to try to use Web API make a rest call but I want the response to be the actual binary image stored in a database, not a JSON base64 encoded string. Anyone got some pointers on this?

Update- This is what I ended up implementing:

 HttpResponseMessage result = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
 result.Content = new StreamContent(new MemoryStream(profile.Avatar));
 result.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/octet-stream");
 result.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = new ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment");
 result.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition.FileName = "avatar.png";
 return result;

Answer 1

You can set the response content to a StreamContent object:

        var fileStream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open);

        var resp = new HttpResponseMessage()
        {
            Content = new StreamContent(fileStream)
        };

        // Find the MIME type
        string mimeType = _extensions[Path.GetExtension(path)];
        resp.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue(mimeType);