Is there any way to stop the REST API from encoding URLs in responses?

@MichaelEcklund it would be invalid JSON if it didn't, besides, an encoded URL is the same URL, URLs have limitations on the kinds of characters they can include

I guess another option would be....

How can I return a base64 encoded image?

from REST response..

I'm able to return the base64 encoded string, but do I need to specify a header type some how?

have you tried just json decoding the result return from the REST API?

2 and "hello" are both valid JSON documents, they don't have to be wrapped in {}