How to return a file using Web API?

I made the follow action:

[HttpGet]
[Route("api/DownloadPdfFile/{id}")]
public HttpResponseMessage DownloadPdfFile(long id)
{
    HttpResponseMessage result = null;
    try
    {
        SQL.File file = db.Files.Where(b => b.ID == id).SingleOrDefault();

        if (file == null)
        {
            result = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.Gone);
        }
        else
        {
            // sendo file to client
            byte[] bytes = Convert.FromBase64String(file.pdfBase64);


            result = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK);
            result.Content = new ByteArrayContent(bytes);
            result.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = new System.Net.Http.Headers.ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment");
            result.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition.FileName = file.name + ".pdf";
        }

        return result;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.Gone);
    }
}

Just a note for .Net Core: We can use the FileContentResult and set the contentType to application/octet-stream if we want to send the raw bytes. Example:

[HttpGet("{id}")]
public IActionResult GetDocumentBytes(int id)
{
    byte[] byteArray = GetDocumentByteArray(id);
    return new FileContentResult(byteArray, "application/octet-stream");
}

Better to return HttpResponseMessage with StreamContent inside of it.

Here is example:

public HttpResponseMessage GetFile(string id)
{
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(id))
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest);

    string fileName;
    string localFilePath;
    int fileSize;

    localFilePath = getFileFromID(id, out fileName, out fileSize);
       
    HttpResponseMessage response = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
    response.Content = new StreamContent(new FileStream(localFilePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read));
    response.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition = new System.Net.Http.Headers.ContentDispositionHeaderValue("attachment");
    response.Content.Headers.ContentDisposition.FileName = fileName;
    response.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/pdf");

    return response;
}

UPDATE from comment by patridge: Should anyone else get here looking to send out a response from a byte array instead of an actual file, you're going to want to use new ByteArrayContent(someData) instead of StreamContent (see here).