HTTP POST Data in HTTPUrlConnection not getting set?

Question

I am creating a HTTPUrlConnection in android and preparing it for a post as shown below

urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

urlConnection.setRequestProperty("content-type", "application/json");
byte [] encoded = Base64.encode((username+":"+password).getBytes("UTF-8"), Base64.DEFAULT); 
//Basic Authorization               
urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic "+ new String(encoded, "UTF-8"));
urlConnection.setDoInput(true);
urlConnection.setDoOutput(true);

//This gets implicitly set when DoOutput is True, but still let it be               
urlConnection.setRequestMethod("POST");

//Required for POST not to return 404 when used on with a host:port combination
//http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5379247/filenotfoundexception-while-getting-the-inputstream-object-from-httpurlconnectio
urlConnection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent","Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0");
urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Accept","*/*");

Then I prepare the JSON and write it to the OutputStream of the connection

JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject();
jsonObject.put("key1", "value1");
jsonObject.put("key2", "value2");



outputStreamWriter = urlConnection.getOutputStream ();
outputStreamWriter.write(jsonObject.toString().getBytes());


finally {
    if (outputStreamWriter != null) try { outputStreamWriter.close(); } catch (IOException logOrIgnore) {}
            }

When I do the request, I get a status of 500 because my server receives an empty POST data which is invalid json.

The same works from a web browser and curl. GET works on android with same parameters. What am I missing? Is something wrong with the ordering of the way parameters should be set for the POST request?

does your server receives the rest of the request ? (the auth, the user-agent ?) — njzk2, Mar 22 '13 at 14:01
@NiravRanpara - GET works, POST does to but fails due to data issues. I have the INTERNET permissions in my manifest. — Pratik Mandrekar, Mar 22 '13 at 14:09
did you try to flush, and to log any exception you may receive in the close or in the write ? — njzk2, Mar 22 '13 at 14:17
(outputStreamWriter.write should be in a try {} catch block, do you log the exception ?) — njzk2, Mar 22 '13 at 14:18
Yes, I have the try blog and exception and flush in place. Have not shown it to reduce the code in the question. There are no errors while writing to the url connection — Pratik Mandrekar, Mar 22 '13 at 14:40

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 28 '13 at 08:14

I was able to get this to work. Snippets from code below

Creating the data to be sent, note the escaped quotes that are required

List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(3);

nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("\A\"", "\"/api/v1/a/1/\""));

nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("\"B\"", "\"/api/v1/b/1/\""));

nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("\"C\"", "\"Hello from Android\""));

Create the client and set headers

HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();

HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(urlToPost);

httppost.setHeader("content-type", "application/json");

Setting the Authorization header

String encoded = "Basic " + Base64.encodeToString((username+":"+password).getBytes("UTF-8"), Base64.URL_SAFE|Base64.NO_WRAP);

httppost.setHeader("Authorization",encoded);

String the data and set it as HTTP Parameters in the POST request

StringEntity entity = new StringEntity(getQueryJSON(nameValuePairs));

httppost.setEntity(entity);

HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);

if(response!=null){

InputStream in = response.getEntity().getContent(); //Get the data in the entity

readStream(in);

}

Utility function to encode the JSON to string private String getQueryJSON(List params) throws UnsupportedEncodingException

{

    StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();

    boolean first = true;

    for (NameValuePair pair : params)

    {

    if (first){

        first = false;

        result.append("{");

    }else

        result.append(",");


    result.append(pair.getName());

    result.append(":");

    result.append(pair.getValue());


    }

    result.append("}");

    return result.toString();

}

HTTP POST Data in HTTPUrlConnection not getting set?

1 Answers1