How do I get the full URI (i.e. not "streamwrapped") for a Drupal node field in a single request to the Services module? - rest

Question

Preface
I'm building a Drupal site that doubles as a content-serving endpoint for a mobile app written in Flex. The CMS is responsible for storing a number of items that have, among other fields, a field for an image that represents the node (like a movie cover or small product shot). I'm using the Services module and the REST service to serve this content to the mobile app as JSON.
Problem
I've noticed that Drupal (or perhaps Services itself) restricts the amount of data that comes back with each request, seemingly based on the granularity of the request. For example, a node index request returns only fields that are more or less the same for every node: nid, title, status, etc. While a request for a single node additionally returns custom fields, including my image field.
My issue is that the URI value for the image field is, "streamwrapped" (or so I've seen it referred to in researching this issue) so that it is simply listed as public://images/node_image.jpg. In order to get the full URI, I have to make a request for the file. This means that for the index page in the mobile app, I have to make 1 + (n * 2) requests just to get the full data about a given node, plus n requests to get the images for each node display. At most n will be 8 for a given page of nodes, so that means I could be making up to 25 requests to the server per page of nodes.
Is this common/accepted or is there an easier/faster/less heavy-handed way to get access to this data in fewer requests?
Side note: One thing I did notice is that the file request comes back with the image data base64-encoded. I could certainly use that to display an image, but I'd prefer to just request the binary image from the server.
Example
/end-point/node.json
[
{
nid: "6",
vid: "6",
type: "page",
language: "und",
title: "Node 6 Title",
...snip...
uri: "http://example.com/end-point/node/6"
},
{
nid: "5",
vid: "5",
type: "game",
language: "und",
title: "Node 5 Title",
...snip...
uri: "http://example.com/end-point/node/5"
},
...snip...
]
/end-point/node/5.json
{
vid: "5",
uid: "1",
title: "Node 5 Title",
...snip...
body: {
und: [{
value: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.",
summary: "Lorem ipsum...",
format: "filtered_html",
safe_value: "<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.</p>",
safe_summary: "<p>Lorem ipsum...</p>"
}]
},
field_artwork: {
und: [{
fid: "8",
alt: "",
title: "",
width: "252",
height: "272",
uid: "1",
filename: "node_image.jpg",
uri: "public://images/node_image.jpg",
filemime: "image/jpeg",
filesize: "32653",
status: "1",
timestamp: "1329839925",
rdf_mapping: []
}]
},
...snip...
}
/end-point/file/8.json
{
fid: "8",
uid: "1",
filename: "node_image.jpg",
uri: "public://node_image.jpg",
filemime: "image/jpeg",
filesize: "32653",
status: "1",
timestamp: "1329839925",
rdf_mapping: [ ],
uri_full: "http://example.com/sites/default/files/images/node_image.jpg",
target_uri: "images/node_image.jpg",
file: "..snip base64-encoded image data...",
image_styles: [ ]
}

Answer 1

Since got no answer, I made it by myself.
The new module, Full URL file information, will fill the info you are looking for.
More details in my blog post - "Drupal file information, filling the URL information for Services".