Post multipart request with Android SDK

Question

I'm trying to do something I thought would be relatively simple: Upload an image to a server with the Android SDK. I'm found a lot of example code:

http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/f9e17bbaf50c5fc/46145fcacd450e48

http://linklens.blogspot.com/2009/06/android-multipart-upload.html

But neither work for me. The confusion I keep running into is what is really needed to make a multipart request. What is the simplest way to have a multipart upload (with an image) for Android?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Update April 29th 2014:

My answer is kind of old by now and I guess you rather want to use some kind of high level library such as Retrofit.

---

Based on this blog I came up with the following solution: http://blog.tacticalnuclearstrike.com/2010/01/using-multipartentity-in-android-applications/

You will have to download additional libraries to get MultipartEntity running!

1) Download httpcomponents-client-4.1.zip from http://james.apache.org/download.cgi#Apache_Mime4J and add apache-mime4j-0.6.1.jar to your project.

2) Download httpcomponents-client-4.1-bin.zip from http://hc.apache.org/downloads.cgi and add httpclient-4.1.jar, httpcore-4.1.jar and httpmime-4.1.jar to your project.

3) Use the example code below.

private DefaultHttpClient mHttpClient;


public ServerCommunication() {
    HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
    params.setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
    mHttpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);
}


public void uploadUserPhoto(File image) {

    try {

        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("some url");

        MultipartEntity multipartEntity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);  
        multipartEntity.addPart("Title", new StringBody("Title"));
        multipartEntity.addPart("Nick", new StringBody("Nick"));
        multipartEntity.addPart("Email", new StringBody("Email"));
        multipartEntity.addPart("Description", new StringBody(Settings.SHARE.TEXT));
        multipartEntity.addPart("Image", new FileBody(image));
        httppost.setEntity(multipartEntity);

        mHttpClient.execute(httppost, new PhotoUploadResponseHandler());

    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e(ServerCommunication.class.getName(), e.getLocalizedMessage(), e);
    }
}

private class PhotoUploadResponseHandler implements ResponseHandler<Object> {

    @Override
    public Object handleResponse(HttpResponse response)
            throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {

        HttpEntity r_entity = response.getEntity();
        String responseString = EntityUtils.toString(r_entity);
        Log.d("UPLOAD", responseString);

        return null;
    }

}

Answer 2

As MultiPartEntity is deprecated. So here is the new way to do it! And you only need httpcore.jar(latest) and httpmime.jar(latest) download them from Apache site.

try
{
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost post = new HttpPost(URL);

    MultipartEntityBuilder entityBuilder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
    entityBuilder.setMode(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);

    entityBuilder.addTextBody(USER_ID, userId);
    entityBuilder.addTextBody(NAME, name);
    entityBuilder.addTextBody(TYPE, type);
    entityBuilder.addTextBody(COMMENT, comment);
    entityBuilder.addTextBody(LATITUDE, String.valueOf(User.Latitude));
    entityBuilder.addTextBody(LONGITUDE, String.valueOf(User.Longitude));

    if(file != null)
    {
        entityBuilder.addBinaryBody(IMAGE, file);
    }

    HttpEntity entity = entityBuilder.build();
    post.setEntity(entity);
    HttpResponse response = client.execute(post);
    HttpEntity httpEntity = response.getEntity();
    result = EntityUtils.toString(httpEntity);
    Log.v("result", result);
}
catch(Exception e)
{
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 3

Here is the LIGHT WEIGHTED solution which worked for me with no external HTTPCore and such libs. I was facing issue of 64K methods so have no option left to avoid HTTPCore libraries

import java.util.List;

import java.io.BufferedReader;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

/**
 * This utility class provides an abstraction layer for sending multipart HTTP
 * POST requests to a web server.
 *
 * @author www.codejava.net
 */
public class MultipartUtility {
    private final String boundary;
    private static final String LINE_FEED = "\r\n";
    private HttpURLConnection httpConn;
    private String charset;
    private OutputStream outputStream;
    private PrintWriter writer;

    /**
     * This constructor initializes a new HTTP POST request with content type
     * is set to multipart/form-data
     *
     * @param requestURL
     * @param charset
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public MultipartUtility(String requestURL, String charset)
            throws IOException {
        this.charset = charset;

        // creates a unique boundary based on time stamp
        boundary = "===" + System.currentTimeMillis() + "===";

        URL url = new URL(requestURL);
        httpConn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        httpConn.setUseCaches(false);
        httpConn.setDoOutput(true); // indicates POST method
        httpConn.setDoInput(true);
        httpConn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type",
                "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary);
        httpConn.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "CodeJava Agent");
        httpConn.setRequestProperty("Test", "Bonjour");
        outputStream = httpConn.getOutputStream();
        writer = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(outputStream, charset),
                true);
    }

    /**
     * Adds a form field to the request
     *
     * @param name  field name
     * @param value field value
     */
    public void addFormField(String name, String value) {
        writer.append("--" + boundary).append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.append("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + name + "\"")
                .append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.append("Content-Type: text/plain; charset=" + charset).append(
                LINE_FEED);
        writer.append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.append(value).append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.flush();
    }

    /**
     * Adds a upload file section to the request
     *
     * @param fieldName  name attribute in <input type="file" name="..." />
     * @param uploadFile a File to be uploaded
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public void addFilePart(String fieldName, File uploadFile)
            throws IOException {
        String fileName = uploadFile.getName();
        writer.append("--" + boundary).append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.append(
                "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + fieldName
                        + "\"; filename=\"" + fileName + "\"")
                .append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.append(
                "Content-Type: "
                        + URLConnection.guessContentTypeFromName(fileName))
                .append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.append("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary").append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.flush();

        FileInputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(uploadFile);
        byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
        int bytesRead = -1;
        while ((bytesRead = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
            outputStream.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
        }
        outputStream.flush();
        inputStream.close();

        writer.append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.flush();
    }

    /**
     * Adds a header field to the request.
     *
     * @param name  - name of the header field
     * @param value - value of the header field
     */
    public void addHeaderField(String name, String value) {
        writer.append(name + ": " + value).append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.flush();
    }

    /**
     * Completes the request and receives response from the server.
     *
     * @return a list of Strings as response in case the server returned
     * status OK, otherwise an exception is thrown.
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public List<String> finish() throws IOException {
        List<String> response = new ArrayList<String>();

        writer.append(LINE_FEED).flush();
        writer.append("--" + boundary + "--").append(LINE_FEED);
        writer.close();

        // checks server's status code first
        int status = httpConn.getResponseCode();
        if (status == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                    httpConn.getInputStream()));
            String line = null;
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                response.add(line);
            }
            reader.close();
            httpConn.disconnect();
        } else {
            throw new IOException("Server returned non-OK status: " + status);
        }

        return response;
    }
}

USAGE

private void uploadMedia() {
        try {

            String charset = "UTF-8";
            File uploadFile1 = new File("/sdcard/myvideo.mp4");
            String requestURL = Data.BASE_URL+Data.URL_UPLOAD_REACTION_TEST;

            MultipartUtility multipart = new MultipartUtility(requestURL, charset);

//            multipart.addHeaderField("User-Agent", "CodeJava");
//            multipart.addHeaderField("Test-Header", "Header-Value");

            multipart.addFormField("friend_id", "Cool Pictures");
            multipart.addFormField("userid", "Java,upload,Spring");

            multipart.addFilePart("uploadedfile", uploadFile1);

            List<String> response = multipart.finish();

            Log.v("rht", "SERVER REPLIED:");

            for (String line : response) {
                Log.v("rht", "Line : "+line);

            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

PHP Code to accept upload

<?php

    $friend_id = $_REQUEST['friend_id'];
    $userid = $_REQUEST['userid'];

    echo 'friend_id : '.$friend_id. ' userid '.$userid;

    move_uploaded_file($_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name'], "./uploads/".$_FILES["uploadedfile"]["name"]);

?>