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How Can ASP.Net MVC controller return an Image?

Mark M242722-Jan-2015

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 requested:

www.mywebsite.com/resource/image/topbanner

The controller will look up topbanner.png and send that image directly back to the client.

I've seen examples of this where you have to create a View - I don't want to use a View. I want to do it all with just the Controller.

Is this possible?

asp.net mvc controller

Updated on 22-Jan-2015

Mark M

Can you answer this question?

Answer

1 Answers

Allen Scott

22-Jan-2015

Use the base controllers File method.

public ActionResult Image(string id)
{
    var dir = Server.MapPath("/Images");
    var path = Path.Combine(dir, id + ".jpg");
    return base.File(path, "image/jpeg");
}

As a note, this seems to be fairly efficient. I did a test where I requested the image through the controller (http://localhost/MyController/Image/MyImage) and through the direct url (http://localhost/Images/MyImage.jpg) and the results were:

MVC: 7.6 milliseconds per photo
Direct: 6.7 milliseconds per photo

Note: this is the average time of a request. The average was calculated by making thousands of requests on the local machine so the totals should not include network latency or bandwidth issues.

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How Can ASP.Net MVC controller return an Image?

Mark M

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