Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image?

Question

Can I create a Controller that simply returns an image asset?

I would like to route this logic through a controller, whenever a URL such as the following is requeste

Answer 1

UPDATE: There are better options than my original answer. This works outside of MVC quite well but it's better to stick with the built-in methods of returning image content. See up-voted answers.

You certainly can. Try out these steps:

1. Load the image from disk in to a byte array
2. cache the image in the case you expect more requests for the image and don't want the disk I/O (my sample doesn't cache it below)
3. Change the mime type via the Response.ContentType
4. Response.BinaryWrite out the image byte array

Here's some sample code:

string pathToFile = @"C:\Documents and Settings\some_path.jpg";
byte[] imageData = File.ReadAllBytes(pathToFile);
Response.ContentType = "image/jpg";
Response.BinaryWrite(imageData);

Hope that helps!