I want to know about What is the use of List<NameValuePair>
or ArrayList<NameValuePair>
in android? Specially when we are using web services using AsyncTask<...>

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5 Answers
NameValuePair is a special <Key, Value>
pair which is used to represent parameters in http request, i.e. www.example.com?key=value
.
NameValuePair is an interface and is defined in apache http client, which is widely used in java to handle http operations. A List<NameValuePair>
is just a list of <key, value>
pairs, and will be used as params in http post request.
HttpPost request = new HttpPost();
List<NameValuePair> params = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("key", "value"));
request.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params));
httpClient.execute(request);
-
code line 3 should be params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("key", "value")); missing ) – pahan Sep 25 '13 at 12:13
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can I use it in other thing than HTTP request ? – Francisco Corrales Morales Jun 03 '14 at 22:01
Some useful stuff for you.
List
is an interface and ArrayList
is an implementation of the List
interface.
List
: List
is an interface in collection framework. several classes like ArrayList
, LinkedList
implement this interface. List
is an ordered collection , so the position of an object does matter.
ArrayList
: An ArrayList
is a class which can grow at runtime. you can store java objects in an ArrayList
and also add new objects at run time.
You will use ArrayList
when you don't have to add or remove objects frequently from it. Because when you remove an object, all other objects need to be re-positioned inside the ArrayList
, if you have this kind of situation, try using LinkedList
instead.
You can find out more information from here.

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List<NameValuePair>
or ArrayList<NameValuePair>
are used to send values from android app to server.
@Override
protected Header[] doInBackground(String... params) {
try {
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(params[1]);
ArrayList<NameValuePair> nameValuePair = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
nameValuePair.add(new BasicNameValuePair("ssn", params[0]));
httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePair,
"UTF-8"));
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
response = EntityUtils.toString(httpEntity);
allHeaders = httpResponse.getAllHeaders();
} catch (Exception ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
return allHeaders;
}
In the code above, I'm passing an attribute ssn
to server using ArrayList<NameValuePair>
.

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Used this code for Upload Datas from android app to server side..
// image file *********************************
// here send all the sqlite database datas to local sever via HttpPost("url");
ArrayList<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("job_id","001"));
nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("picture_path",picturejson.toString()));
nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("date_time",datetime_str));
nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("location",gpslocation_str));
try{
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://Sample/iphone/getinput");
httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
httpclient.execute(httppost);
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
//HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
//is = entity.getContent();
//HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(postRequest);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
response.getEntity().getContent(), "UTF-8"));
String sResponse;
StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder();
while ((sResponse = reader.readLine()) != null) {
s = s.append(sResponse);
}
System.out.println("Response: ");
Log.v("hari", "Response : ");
}catch(Exception e){
//Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection "+e.toString());
}

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protected String doInBackground(String... params)
{
try
{
List<NameValuePair> param = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
param.add(new BasicNameValuePair("username", edName));
param.add(new BasicNameValuePair("email", edEmail));
param.add(new BasicNameValuePair("password", edPassword));
param.add(new BasicNameValuePair("mobile", edMobile));
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(params[0]);
httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(param));
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
InputStream is = httpEntity.getContent();
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "iso-8859-1"), 8);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
String line = null;
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null)
{sb.append(line + "\n");
}
String json = sb.toString();
JSONObject jObj = new JSONObject(json);
msg= jObj.getString("message");
}
catch(Exception e)
{
Log.e("error", "Network problem");
}
return msg;
}
}

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