What's the best way to serve up multiple binary files from a single WebApi method?

Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Api controller method that gets passed a list of file IDs and returns thumbnail images for those files.

So, the client might pass in a li

Answer 1

One challenge I see is that based on the number of images being sent back the caller has to adjust their timeout value. If this was for a book store, there could be a lot of images sent back.

What if you only sent back the urls for each image and leave it up to the caller to get the actual image? It would mean a little more traffic with multiple calls but the caller would get back information sooner than later and then get the images based on the caller's requirement.

I could be wrong, but I thought the idea behind rest was to identify each resource versus bundling a bunch of images and calling that a resource. Just a thought...