Java, HttpURLConnection and setting the content length

Question

I'm setting the length of the content in my HttpURLConnection, for a PUT.

urlConnection.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", "" + responseJSONArray.toString(2).getBytes("UTF8").length);

The actual number of bytes is 74. However, when I query the content length of urlConnection I'm returned -1. Why is that? And why are lengths not equal (given that I set this)?

I must set the content-length because I'm receiving a 411 response from the server.

(Also, in the Sun examples I've seen the second argument of setRequestProperty is of type int and not String, which seems odd.)

Answer 1

You shouldn't set this header yourself. Use setFixedLengthStreamingMode() or setChunkedTransferMode().

Answer 2

Also do not forget to add a setDoOutput to tell your connection you are going to send data.