Return byte[] from ASP.net MVC 4 WEB API controller

Question

I have a controller method which returns byte[].

[ActionName("testbytes")]
public byte[] GetTestBytes() {
    var b = new byte[] {137, 80, 78, 71};
    return b;
}

when i hit the api, i get following result.

<base64Binary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">iVBORw==</base64Binary>

Also when i hit this api from custom HttpClient, i get 10 bytes as a response. Following is the code of custom HttpClient.

public async Task<byte[]> GetTestBytes() {
    var uri = "apiPath/testbytes";
    using (var client = new HttpClient())
    {
        var httpResponse = await client.GetAsync(uri, HttpCompletionOption.ResponseContentRead);
        if (httpResponse.IsSuccessStatusCode) {
            var bytes = await httpResponse.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync();
        }
        return bytes;
    }
    return null;
}

I am expecting 4 bytes while i am receiving 10 bytes in response.

What do you mean you expect 4 bytes? That is 4 bytes. tomeko.net/online_tools/base64.php?lang=en — Aron
– Aron, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 13:03
That IS 4 bytes. Base64 encoding encodes binary into printable characters, so it takes more than 4 bytes to store 4 bytes, in this case 10 bytes. — Aron
– Aron, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 13:06
@Aron. Why API returns response in Base64 encoding? Is there any way to stop this. — MARKAND Bhatt
– MARKAND Bhatt, Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 5:08

AviD · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-18 13:28:27Z

@Markand: When you are hitting API, the response returned will be wrapped by double quotes ("responsebodygoeshere")

So following byte array

var b = new byte[] {137, 80, 78, 71};

is serialized as "iVBORw=="

Due to this when calling httpResponse.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync(); you will get bytes representation of "iVBORw==" (which will be 10 bytes) and not for iVBORw==

Optionally you can read response content as string and then trim the quotes and then convert it to the byte[] (There may be better approach. :))

i.e. var response = httpResponse.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Trim('"')

then call following method to get bytes

var bytesResponse =  Convert.FromBase64String(response);

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