Posting data to new Google Forms

Question

With the previous(legacy) version of google forms it was possible to programatically post data to the form by sending an HttpPost to a url like this:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/formResponse?formkey=[key]

and data like this:

entry.1.single=data&entry.2.single=moredata

With the new version of google forms (released jan 2013 I think) the url structure is different. Here is a snippet from the "view live form page"

<form action="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ee330GpkMHX_0dKWmJb6ZPdm4FBhhqJSqBbgysEtq6M/formResponse" method="POST" ...
<input type="text" name="entry.1566150510"

From this code snippet I would think that I could post to a url like this:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/[key]/formResponse

with data like this:

entry.1566150510=data

But I've tried that from java(android) like this:

public void postData() {
    // Create a new HttpClient and Post Header
    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    Log.i(myTag, "Inside postData()");
    String fullUrl = "https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ee330GpkMHX_0dKWmJb6ZPdm4FBhhqJSqBbgysEtq6M/formResponse";
    Log.i(myTag, "url = " + fullUrl);
    HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(urlBase);

    try {
        // Add your data
        List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(2);
        nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("entry.1566150510", "somedata"));
        UrlEncodedFormEntity data = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs);
        Log.i(myTag, data.toString());
        httppost.setEntity(data);
        Log.i(myTag, EntityUtils.toString(data));
        // Execute HTTP Post Request
        ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler=new BasicResponseHandler();
        String response = httpclient.execute(httppost, responseHandler);
        Log.i("DocsUploader", "response = " + response);

    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
} 

and I get 404, not found response.

Am I missing something obvious here, or has google just removed the ability to post to the new forms?

Answer 1

Consider doing the update with google-apps-script (I suspect it will be less work). And it will continue to work even if google make more tweaks.

Answer 2

Ok, something about my use of HttpClient and HttpPost was done incorrectly. I don't know exactly what I messed up but I am now using this and it is working correctly:

public void postData() {
    String fullUrl = "https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ee330GpkMHX_0dKWmJb6ZPdm4FBhhqJSqBbgysEtq6M/formResponse";
    HttpRequest mReq = new HttpRequest();
    String response = mReq.sendPost(fullUrl, "entry.1566150510=data");
    Log.i(myTag, response);
} 

Where HttpRequest is a helper class created by MattC, and posted as an answer to this question: Secure HTTP Post in Android.