ambiguous behavior of new line character

Question

I am uploading a large string to web-service. The string contains new line character which is written as "\n". The data looks some thing like:

 05/06/2012 11:35:43 AM- DB exists, transferring data\n05/06/2012
 11:48:20 AM- loadUserSpinners, cursor.getCount()=2\n05/06/2012
 11:48:20 AM- Battery: 50%\n05/06/2012 11:48:20 AM- ITEM SELECTED: 0

the above data is stored in string JsonArrObj. To upload the data/string, i am using the following code:

    HttpParams httpParameters = new BasicHttpParams();
    int timeoutConnection = 360000; //6 minutes
    HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(httpParameters, timeoutConnection);
    int timeoutSocket = 420000; //7 minutes
    HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(httpParameters, timeoutSocket);
    HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(httpParameters);

    JSONArray jsonParams = new JSONArray();
    Object[] params={IPAddress,Database,DbName,DbPassword,JsonArrObj};
    for (int i = 0; i < params.length; i++) {
        jsonParams.put(params[i]);
    }

    JSONObject jsonRequest = new JSONObject();
    jsonRequest.put("id", Id);
    jsonRequest.put("method", FunctionName);
    jsonRequest.put("params", jsonParams);
    JSONEntity entity = new JSONEntity(jsonRequest);
    entity.setContentType("application/json; charset=utf-8");       
    HttpPost request = new HttpPost(URL);
    request.setEntity(entity);

    HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(request);
    StatusLine statusLine = response.getStatusLine();
    int statusCode = statusLine.getStatusCode();
    if (statusCode == 200) {
        HttpEntity httpEntity = response.getEntity();
        InputStream content = httpEntity.getContent();

        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
                new InputStreamReader(content,"iso-8859-1"),8);
        String line;
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            builder.append(line);

            LogE("result line: "+line);
            String str=convertString(line);
            parseJson(str);
        }
        content.close();
    }

The string is uploaded successfully. The problem I am facing is: while string is being converted to jsonParams, the "\n" in the string data gets converted to "\\n" as a result, on the server side, it shows a small box in stead of new line.

When I open this string in NOTEPAD application, it displays small boxes. But when I open it in WORDPAD app, text is displayed on a new line. According to me, I might have entered in-correct "content-type" or encoding. Please suggest a solution for the same.

JsonArrObj= URLEncoder.encode(JsonArrObj, "utf-8"); gave error while uploading itself...

The data which is sent in the jsonParams- jsonArrObj finally looks like:

05\/06\/2012 04:05:52 PM- DB exists, transferring
data\\n05\/06\/2012 04:32:56 PM- loadUserSpinners,
cursor.getCount()\\u003d2\\n05\/06\/2012 04:32:56 PM- Battery:
50%\\n05\/06\/2012 04:32:56 PM- ITEM SELECTED: 0

Answer 1

Well, the encoder escapes your newline characters. If you want to transport newline chars properly, you can encode the whole stream with base64. If your target os (for data to send) is Windows then you should use \r\n, if mac then \r if unix\linux then \n. After encoding data try to send the encoded and decode it on the other side. For base64 Mr. Google will convince you.