Uploading image to server in Multipart along with JSON data in Android

Question

I am trying to upload an image to a server along with some JSON data that is collected from a form.

The server has authentication.

METHOD: post

HEADERS:

Authorization   Basic d2Vic2VydmljZTpyM05hdTE3Rw==

Content-Type    multipart/form-data;boundary=xxxxxxxx

BODY:

--xxxxxxxx

Content-Disposition: form-data; name="jsonFile"
Content-Type: application/json

{"model":"Premium","deviceLongitude":4.79337638,"pseudo":"nickname","deviceLatitude":45.7671507,"year":"2005","email":"[email protected]","deviceLocale":"fr_FR","title":"my picture"}

--xxxxxxxx

Content-Disposition: form-data; name="imgName"
Content-Type: image/jpeg

//Image data array

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/4QBYRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgAAgESAAMAAAAB
AAEAAIdpAAQAAAABAAAAJgAAAAAAA6ABAAMAAAABAAEAAKACAAQAAAABAAAB4KAD
AAQAAAABAAACgAAAAAD/2wBDAAEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEB
AQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQH/2wBDAQEBAQEBAQEB
AQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEB
AQEBAQEBAQH/wAARCAKAAeADAREAAhEBAxEB/8QAHwAAAQUBAQEBAQEAAAAAAAAA
AAECAwQFBgcICQoL/8QAtRAAAgEDAwIEAwUFBAQAAAF
--xxxxxxxx

Answer 1

I know this post is a couple of years old, but I'd like to share my solution using MultiPartEntity from here available as part of the HttpClient download. I used version 4.2.5.

I originally used a process similar to above, which worked well until I started getting memory errors when I started supporting uploading of videos. I researched a lot of posts here and got a lot of good ideas. I used the Java Decompiler available here to look at the code in the Jar file to figure out how to put things together.

//filepath is passed in like /mnt/sdcard/DCIM/100MEDIA/VIDEO0223.mp4    
String fileName = filePath.substring(filePath.lastIndexOf("/") + 1);

String extension = fileName.substring(fileName.lastIndexOf(".") + 1);

String json = "{your_json_goes_here}"; 

File media = new File(filePath); 

URI uri = your_uri_goes_here;

DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost post = new HttpPost(uri);

StringBody jsonBody = new StringBody(json, "application/json", null);

FormBodyPart jsonBodyPart = new FormBodyPart("json", jsonBody);

String mimeType;

if (requestCode == Constants.ACTION_TAKE_VIDEO) {
    mimeType = "video/" + extension;
} else {
    // default to picture
    mimeType = "image/" + extension;
}

FileBody fileBody = new FileBody(media, mimeType, "ISO-8859-1");

FormBodyPart fileBodyPart = new FormBodyPart(fileName, fileBody);               

MultipartEntity mpEntity = new MultipartEntity(null, "xxBOUNDARYxx", null);

mpEntity.addPart(jsonBodyPart);
mpEntity.addPart(fileBodyPart);

post.addHeader("Content-Type", "multipart/mixed;boundary=xxBOUNDARYxx");

post.setEntity(mpEntity);

HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(post);

InputStream data = response.getEntity().getContent();
BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(
        new InputStreamReader(data));
String responseLine;
StringBuilder responseBuilder = new StringBuilder();

while ((responseLine = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
    responseBuilder.append(responseLine);
}

System.out.println("Response: " + responseBuilder.toString());