HttpRequest Body parameters in iOS

Question

I am using web service for my iOS app. I know how to send http post request via URL (not http Body) and get response using NSURLConnection Delegate. But now there is better approach which I am following for web service and passing parameters in request body. I looked for library on google and found this.

But the code is bit difficult for me and I suppose there should be function for the same, which can make this bit easier. Is there any? the code so far is below.

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] 
    initWithURL:[NSURL 
    URLWithString:**WebService URL**]];

[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[request setValue:@"text/json" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-type"];

NSString *jsonString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"{\n\"username\":\"%@\",\n\"%@\":\"%@\",\n\"%@\":\"%@\",\n\"%@\":%@,\n\"%@\":%@,\n\"version\":%@,\n\"name\":\"%@\"\n}",userName, @"password",pass,@"accessToken",token,@"isOnline",@"True",@"accountType",type,@"False",name];

[request setHTTPBody:[jsonString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

[[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];

jsonString in this code is the http body. I want to pass parameters in request body. Now, after executing this code i get null in NSData variable. whereas my web service function returns a value and also it returns if the execution was successful. what is wrong in my code. Thank you.

Answer 1

Thanks for your answers. Finally I found the exact solution which works absolutely fine. I have used NSURLConnection delegate and I am passing parameter in HTTPBody in json. I am receiving response also in json. But sending parameter directly as json is not permitted in httprequestbody so we need to take it in NSData and set content-type.

Note: specifying content type is very important.

 -(void)sendDataToServer:(NSString*)userName :(NSString*)name{
 {
 NSArray *keys = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"name",@"accountType",@"isOnline",@"username", nil];
NSArray *objects = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:name,[NSNumber numberWithBool:false],[NSNumber numberWithBool:false],userName, nil];
NSDictionary *jsonDictionary = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:objects forKeys:keys];

NSString *myJSONString =[jsonDictionary JSONRepresentation];
NSData *myJSONData =[myJSONString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSLog(@"myJSONString :%@", myJSONString);
NSLog(@"myJSONData :%@", myJSONData);

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:Your URL string]];
[request setHTTPBody:myJSONData];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[request setValue:@"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];

NSURLConnection *theConnection=[[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];


  if (theConnection) {
      NSLog(@"connected");
      receivedData=[[NSMutableData alloc]init];
  } else {

      NSLog(@"not connected");
  }

  }

  - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response
{
   [receivedData setLength:0];
}

 - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data
{
[receivedData appendData:data];
NSString* responseString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSLog(@"response: %@",responseString);
}

 - (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection
{
// do something with the data
// receivedData is declared as a method instance elsewhere
NSLog(@"Succeeded! Received %lu data",(unsigned long)[receivedData length]);
NSString* responseString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:receivedData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSLog(@"response: %@",responseString);


 NSError *myError = nil;
NSDictionary *res = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:receivedData options:NSJSONReadingMutableLeaves error:&myError];

// show all values

for(id key in res) {

    id value = [res objectForKey:key];

    NSString *keyAsString = (NSString *)key;
    NSString *valueAsString = (NSString *)value;

    NSLog(@"key: %@", keyAsString);
    NSLog(@"value: %@", valueAsString);
}  
}

P.S : You will need to add JSon files for serialization(json.h).

Answer 2

There is a typo in your sample code, this would explain the null result :

NSString ***jsonString** = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"{\n\"username\":\"%@\",\n\"%@\":\"%@\",\n\"%@\":\"%@\",\n\"%@\":%@,\n\"%@\":%@,\n\"version\":%@,\n\"name\":\"%@\"\n}",userName, @"password",pass,@"accessToken",token,@"isOnline",@"True",@"accountType",type,@"False",name];

[request setHTTPBody:[**xmlString** dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

Answer 3

Check out this question nsurlrequest post body and this http post encode type

Generally, the body should conforms to "key=value" format

To your question, you need a "key" for your jsonString

[request setHTTPBody:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"postedJson=%@", jsonString]];

postedJson is the key through which you'll get the value of it at server side. such as:

request["postedJson"]

the value returned would be the jsonString you construted