Overview
This is an article in a series of Sitecore how-to articles. These articles are meant to be quick guides to accomplish various tasks within Sitecore. The how-to articles have proven to be very helpful internally at One North Interactive https://www.onenorth.com. These articles assume working Sitecore knowledge. I just wanted to share the articles with the community. Hopefully you find them helpful.
How-To
Generate Link with Default Option
string url = Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaManager.GetMediaUrl(mediaItem);
Generate Safe Link (Sitecore 8+)
https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/setting_up_and_maintaining/security_hardening/configuring/protect_media_request
string unsafeUrl = Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaManager.GetMediaUrl(mediaItem);
string safeUrl = Sitecore.Resources.Media.HashingUtils.ProtectAssetUrl(unsafeUrl);
Generate Link with Modified Options
Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaUrlOptions mediaUrlOptions = new Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaUrlOptions { AbsolutePath = true };
string url = Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaManager.GetMediaUrl(item, mediaUrlOptions);
Generate Link within Content with Modified Options
Sometimes you may want to deviate from the default media url options for media items within content (i.e. absolute urls for images for PDF generation). In this case you need to use Sitecore.Configuration.SettingsSwitcher.
Not confirmed, but this setting changes should be scoped to the request context.
Sitecore.Configuration.SettingsSwitcher mediaSettingsSwitcher = new Sitecore.Configuration.SettingsSwitcher("Media.AlwaysIncludeServerUrl", "true");