Returning binary body and http headers from an AWS lambda through API gateway

Question

I have a lambda that needs to return a binary object and some http headers (e.g. content-type) through an api gateway (using lambda integration) OR redirect to another URL.

Answer 1

I recently got this working after facing a similar problem.

In my case, I was missing two things:

First, I needed to change the list of types AWS will send to the upstream in the "Accept" header"

"x-amazon-apigateway-binary-media-types" : [
  "image/jpeg"
]

Secondly, I needed to set the Integration Response to "Convert to binary (if needed)":

"contentHandling": "CONVERT_TO_BINARY"

See this answer for the details, and sample config.

I also found that I wasn't being patient enough. Whenever I deployed the API, I was checking immediately, instead of waiting a few minutes for the changes to propagate.