Binary JSON format support

Today it is not possible to pass pass a large binary attachment to an action. Even encoding it in base64 the Json payload is limited to 1M.

In a classic Mobile/Bluemix/Watson/OpenWhisk integration scenario a mobile application want to upload a file such as a picture or an audio/video recording in order to orchestrate some Watson processing on this file.

In order to “pass” this binary file to an OpenWhisk action the mobile app has to first PUT the file on the cloud using for example Cloudant REST api and then pass the ID to the Whisk action. It also has to eventually manage the lifetime of this temporary storage of the file on Cloudant once is no more needed. In this way part of the chaining/orchestration logic must be managed on the client side outside the direct control of OpenWhisk.

It should be nice to support Binary JSON and let the client app directly pass the binary file to the OpenWhisk action calling a unique API and to let OpenWhisk orchestrate the entire service eventually managing caching/persistance of the file on Cloudant if needed and passing the file to other actions and Watson API.