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

You can write directly to the response but then it isn't testable. It is preferred to return an ActionResult that has deferred execution. Here is my resusable StreamResult:

public class StreamResult : ViewResult
{
    public Stream Stream { get; set; }
    public string ContentType { get; set; }
    public string ETag { get; set; }

    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
    {
        context.HttpContext.Response.ContentType = ContentType;
        if (ETag != null) context.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("ETag", ETag);
        const int size = 4096;
        byte[] bytes = new byte[size];
        int numBytes;
        while ((numBytes = Stream.Read(bytes, 0, size)) > 0)
            context.HttpContext.Response.OutputStream.Write(bytes, 0, numBytes);
    }
}