How can I perform a HTTP DELETE request with body?

Question

I want to perform a HTTP DELETE request with a xml in the body (not a form). How can I perform this HTTP DELETE request?

I tried with HttpURLConnection but there are some limitations with it.

I tried with the apache's HttpClient too. But I don't know how to send the xml without the structure of application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

Well in the REST based api http request body is supported ..But i didn't find it anywhere implemented the request body for delete.Hmm interesting — Lithu T.V, Feb 26 '13 at 19:09
possible duplicate of [HttpDelete with body](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3773338/httpdelete-with-body) — Marcin Orlowski, Apr 08 '13 at 13:49
@WebnetMobile, It's not a duplicate. [HttpDelete with body](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3820549/842697) solves the problem if you want send a ````application/x-www-form-urlencoded```` structure but doesn't work with raw data (like a xml). — Brais Gabin, Apr 08 '13 at 17:00
Does this answer your question? [HttpDelete with body](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3773338/httpdelete-with-body) — Jacob van Lingen, Dec 14 '20 at 15:32

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 10 '14 at 10:06

This code will make it:

try {
        HttpEntity entity = new StringEntity(jsonArray.toString());
        HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpDeleteWithBody httpDeleteWithBody = new HttpDeleteWithBody("http://10.17.1.72:8080/contacts");
        httpDeleteWithBody.setEntity(entity);

        HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpDeleteWithBody);

    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

To access the response you can simply do: response.getStatusLine();

And here is the HttpDeleteWithBody class definition: HttpDeleteWithBody

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 06 '13 at 09:31

3

why not do this with HttpClient

class MyDelete extends HttpPost{
    public MyDelete(String url){
        super(url);
    }
    @Override
    public String getMethod() {
        return "DELETE";
    }

}

it works well.

answered Jun 06 '13 at 09:31

Ishan Liyanage

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How can I perform a HTTP DELETE request with body?

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