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 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.