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

You could create a compressed file (e.g. a ZIP file) out of all the thumbnails and send that back.

Then the caller just has to unzip it their end - sending a single file containing multiple files is going to be far more acceptable then sending multiple files in a single stream.

Disadvantage is you're less likely to be able to take advantage of caching (depending on your usage patterns of course).