Generic HttpHandler vs normal aspx Page HttpHandler

Question

Is there any difference in using Generic HttpHandler(ashx) instead of normal aspx Page for returning daynamic Images as stream. Every tutorial that I have read about serving dynamic files uses generic handler but I can't seem to find any comparasion article between those two. Can someone explain why it is good to use Generic handler instead of Page Handler for this task?

Thanks.

Answer 1

An ASPX page is already a generic handler as it implements IHttpHandler interface. It's just that it contains lots of code that's absolutely unnecessary when all you need is to generate a dynamic image. So implementing a custom handler will be faster in terms of performance.

Just look at a typical WebForm page lifecycle (ASPX):

All this is useless when all you need is to generate a dynamic image. All you care about is the ProcessRequest method and write directly to the response stream.