Can a web service return a stream?

Question

I\'ve been writing a little application that will let people upload & download files to me. I\'ve added a web service to this applciation to provide the upload/download fun

Answer 1

I hate to break it to those of you who think a streaming web service is not possible, but in reality, all http requests are stream based. Every browser doing a GET to a web site is stream based. Every call to a web service is stream based. Yes, all. We don't notice this at the level where we are implementing services or pages because lower levels of the architecture are dealing with this for you - but it is being done.

Have you ever noticed in a browser that sometimes it can take a while to fetch a page - the browser just keeps cranking away showing the hourglass? That is because the browser is waiting on a stream.

Streams are the reason mime/types have to be sent before the actual data - it's all just a byte stream to the browser, it wouldn't be able to identify a photo if you didn't tell it what it was first. It's also why you have to pass the size of a binary before sending - the browser won't be able to tell where the image stops and the page picks up again.

It's all just a stream of bytes to the client. If you want to prove this for yourself, just get a hold of the output stream at any point in the processing of a request and close() it. You will blow up everything. The browser will immediately stop showing the hourglass, and will display a "cannot find" or "connection reset at server" or some other such message.

That a lot of people don't know that all of this stuff is stream based shows just how much stuff has been layered on top of it. Some would say too much stuff - I am one of those.

Good luck and happy development - relax those shoulders!