How to consume a file with a ServiceStack client

Question

I am trying to use ServiceStack to return a file to a ServiceStack client in a RESTful manner.

I have read other questions on SO (here and here) which advise using HttpR

Answer 1

You wouldn't consume files with the ServiceStack's .NET ServiceClients as they're mainly for sending DTO's.

You can just use any normal WebRequest to download files, in the v3.9.33 of ServiceStack introduced some handy WebRequest extensions HTTP Utils that make this easy, e.g:

For a text file:

var xmlFile = downloadUrl.GetXmlFromUrl(responseFilter: httpRes => {
        var fileInfoHeaders = httpRes.Headers[HttpHeaders.ContentDisposition];
    });

Where fileInfoHeaders contains the W3C ContentDisposition HTTP Header, e.g. when returning a FileInfo, ServiceStack returns:

attachment;filename="file.xml";size={bytesLen};
creation-date={date};modification-date={date};read-date={date};

To download a binary file you can use:

var rawBytes = downloadUrl.GetBytesFromUrl(httpRes => ...);