Is sending a PDF as encoded byte array in XML sensible

Question

I am looking to return a PDF from a webservice call. (ATM, a custom proxy is required at the client-side)

AFAICS, there are 2 ways of doing it

a) Return the link to a web-accessible location b) Encode the PDF and include it in the XML

In my circumstance, a) will require 2 trips from the client, the first to get the path and the second to get the file.

However, wrt b), this link (http://www.coderanch.com/t/279020/Streams/java/wrting-bytearray-xml-file#1283263) suggests that it isn't a good idea to encode a PDF, though without explanation.

I'd be grateful if someone would offer recommendations of the above (and potentially, other alternatives).

Many thx

Simon

Answer 1

Would you be Base64 encoding it?

From Wikipedia "Very roughly, the final size of base64-encoded binary data is equal to 1.37 times the original data size + 814 bytes (for headers). "

so very quickly this will outweigh the disadvantage of 2 network trips.

Answer 2

Does it have to be a webservice call? Could you make it a simple get request to a page in your site that you return the PDF from? You could then enforce SSL on this request.