Returning a byte[] in WCF service

Question

Is it a good practice to return a byte[] in a WCF service which will be invoked by many applications

below is the code

public byte[] GetDoc(string docParam)
{
    byte[] doc;
    doc = GenerateDoc(docParam);
}

Thanks

Answer 1

It's definitely possible to return byte[] and WCF allows you to do this using MTOM encoding.

If the size of the binary buffer is big you could use WCF streaming. In this case you would return Stream data type, and read from that Stream on the client side.

Answer 2

It's good practice to factor common code into a convenient method so that many callers could call this convenient method. This is regardless of return type. If the callers would need to manipulate the byte[], then this can become convenient and eliminate redundant code.

By the way, regarding the code that you posted, is that real code or just an example? If it's real code:

1. It won't compile, because it doesn't return a byte[].
2. If you were to call return doc; as the last line, why have GenerateDoc() inside GetDoc()? GetDoc() doesn't really provide any true benefit.