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

I have found mythz answer to work well, but it is also possible to use their built in JSonServiceClient to also process file requests as well, just in a slightly non-intuitive way because you can't actually use the return type you would expect.

For a model definition like this:

[Route("/filestorage/outgoing/{Name}.{Extension}", "GET")]
[Route("/filestorage/outgoing", "GET")]
public class GetFileStorageStream : IReturn
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Extension { get; set; }
    public bool ForDownload { get; set; }
}

You can define your service to return an HttpResult:

public class FileStorageService : Service
{
    public HttpResult Get(GetFileStorageStream fileInformation)
    {
        var internalResult = GetFromFileStorage(fileInformation);
        var fullFilePath = Path.Combine("C:\Temp", internalResult.FileName);
        return new HttpResult(new FileInfo(fullFilePath), asAttachment: fileInformation.ForDownload);
    }
}

Then on the client side you can use this Get template to properly get the web context:

var client = new JsonServiceClient("http://localhost:53842");
var httpResponse = client.Get("/filestorage/outgoing/test.jpg");
pictureBox1.Image = Image.FromStream(httpResponse.GetResponseStream());

I found it was not possible to use the new API Get methods as they would attempt to deserialize the HttpResult which isn't actually a true return type but a class representing the web context that service stack has created.