How can I make a multipart/form-data POST request using Java?

Question

We use HttpClient 4.x to make multipart file post.

UPDATE: As of HttpClient 4.3, some classes have been deprecated. Here is the code with new API:

CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClients.createDefault();
HttpPost uploadFile = new HttpPost("...");
MultipartEntityBuilder builder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
builder.addTextBody("field1", "yes", ContentType.TEXT_PLAIN);

// This attaches the file to the POST:
File f = new File("[/path/to/upload]");
builder.addBinaryBody(
    "file",
    new FileInputStream(f),
    ContentType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM,
    f.getName()
);

HttpEntity multipart = builder.build();
uploadFile.setEntity(multipart);
CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(uploadFile);
HttpEntity responseEntity = response.getEntity();

Below is the original snippet of code with deprecated HttpClient 4.0 API:

HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url);

FileBody bin = new FileBody(new File(fileName));
StringBody comment = new StringBody("Filename: " + fileName);

MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
reqEntity.addPart("bin", bin);
reqEntity.addPart("comment", comment);
httppost.setEntity(reqEntity);

HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
HttpEntity resEntity = response.getEntity();

These are the Maven dependencies I have.

Java Code:

HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);

FileBody uploadFilePart = new FileBody(uploadFile);
MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
reqEntity.addPart("upload-file", uploadFilePart);
httpPost.setEntity(reqEntity);

HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpPost);

Maven Dependencies in pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
  <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.1</version>
  <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
  <artifactId>httpmime</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.1</version>
  <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

If size of the JARs matters (e.g. in case of applet), one can also directly use httpmime with java.net.HttpURLConnection instead of HttpClient.

httpclient-4.2.4:      423KB
httpmime-4.2.4:         26KB
httpcore-4.2.4:        222KB
commons-codec-1.6:     228KB
commons-logging-1.1.1:  60KB
Sum:                   959KB

httpmime-4.2.4:         26KB
httpcore-4.2.4:        222KB
Sum:                   248KB

Code:

HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
connection.setDoOutput(true);
connection.setRequestMethod("POST");

FileBody fileBody = new FileBody(new File(fileName));
MultipartEntity multipartEntity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.STRICT);
multipartEntity.addPart("file", fileBody);

connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", multipartEntity.getContentType().getValue());
OutputStream out = connection.getOutputStream();
try {
    multipartEntity.writeTo(out);
} finally {
    out.close();
}
int status = connection.getResponseCode();
...

Dependency in pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
    <artifactId>httpmime</artifactId>
    <version>4.2.4</version>
</dependency>

Use this code to upload images or any other files to the server using post in multipart.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;

import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.ResponseHandler;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost;
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.MultipartEntity;
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.content.FileBody;
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.content.StringBody;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.BasicResponseHandler;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;

public class SimplePostRequestTest {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedEncodingException, IOException {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://192.168.0.102/uploadtest/upload_photo");

        try {
            FileBody bin = new FileBody(new File("/home/ubuntu/cd.png"));
            StringBody id = new StringBody("3");
            MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
            reqEntity.addPart("upload_image", bin);
            reqEntity.addPart("id", id);
            reqEntity.addPart("image_title", new StringBody("CoolPic"));

            httppost.setEntity(reqEntity);
            System.out.println("Requesting : " + httppost.getRequestLine());
            ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
            String responseBody = httpclient.execute(httppost, responseHandler);
            System.out.println("responseBody : " + responseBody);

        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {

        } finally {
            httpclient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
        }
    }

}

it requires below files to upload.

libraries are httpclient-4.1.2.jar, httpcore-4.1.2.jar, httpmime-4.1.2.jar, httpclient-cache-4.1.2.jar, commons-codec.jar and commons-logging-1.1.1.jar to be in classpath.

Here's a solution that does not require any libraries.

This routine transmits every file in the directory d:/data/mpf10 to urlToConnect

String boundary = Long.toHexString(System.currentTimeMillis());
URLConnection connection = new URL(urlToConnect).openConnection();
connection.setDoOutput(true);
connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary);
PrintWriter writer = null;
try {
    writer = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(connection.getOutputStream(), "UTF-8"));
    File dir = new File("d:/data/mpf10");
    for (File file : dir.listFiles()) {
        if (file.isDirectory()) {
            continue;
        }
        writer.println("--" + boundary);
        writer.println("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + file.getName() + "\"; filename=\"" + file.getName() + "\"");
        writer.println("Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8");
        writer.println();
        BufferedReader reader = null;
        try {
            reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file), "UTF-8"));
            for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null;) {
                writer.println(line);
            }
        } finally {
            if (reader != null) {
                reader.close();
            }
        }
    }
    writer.println("--" + boundary + "--");
} finally {
    if (writer != null) writer.close();
}
// Connection is lazily executed whenever you request any status.
int responseCode = ((HttpURLConnection) connection).getResponseCode();
// Handle response

You can also use REST Assured which builds on HTTP Client. It's very simple:

given().multiPart(new File("/somedir/file.bin")).when().post("/fileUpload");

httpcomponents-client-4.0.1 worked for me. However, I had to add the external jar apache-mime4j-0.6.jar (org.apache.james.mime4j) otherwise reqEntity.addPart("bin", bin); would not compile. Now it's working like charm.