Sending files using POST with HttpURLConnection

Question

Since the Android developers recommend to use the HttpURLConnection class, I was wondering if anyone can provide me with a good example on how to send a bitmap "file" (actually an in-memory stream) via POST to an Apache HTTP server. I'm not interested in cookies or authentication or anything complicated, but I just want to have a reliable and logic implementation. All the examples that I've seen around here look more like "let's try this and maybe it works".

Right now, I have this code:

URL url;
HttpURLConnection urlConnection = null;
try {
    url = new URL("http://example.com/server.cgi");

    urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

} catch (Exception e) {
    this.showDialog(getApplicationContext(), e.getMessage());
}
finally {
    if (urlConnection != null)
    {
        urlConnection.disconnect();
    }
}

where showDialog should just display an AlertDialog (in case of an invalid URL?).

Now, let's say that I generate a bitmap like so: Bitmap image = this.getBitmap() inside a control derived from View and I want to send it via POST. What would be the proper procedure to achieve such a thing? What classes do I need to use? Can I use HttpPost like in this example? If so, how would I construct the InputStreamEntity for my bitmap? I would find it revolting to be required to first store the bitmap in a file on the device.

---

I should also mention that I really need to send every unaltered pixel of the original bitmap to the server, so I can't convert it to JPEG.

Answer 1

I tried the solutions above and none worked for me out of the box.

However http://www.baeldung.com/httpclient-post-http-request. Line 6 POST Multipart Request worked within seconds

public void whenSendMultipartRequestUsingHttpClient_thenCorrect() 
  throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {
    CloseableHttpClient client = HttpClients.createDefault();
    HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("http://www.example.com");

    MultipartEntityBuilder builder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
    builder.addTextBody("username", "John");
    builder.addTextBody("password", "pass");
    builder.addBinaryBody("file", new File("test.txt"),
      ContentType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM, "file.ext");

    HttpEntity multipart = builder.build();
    httpPost.setEntity(multipart);

    CloseableHttpResponse response = client.execute(httpPost);
    client.close();
}

Answer 2

I found using okHttp a lot easier as I could not get any of these solutions to work: https://stackoverflow.com/a/37942387/447549

Answer 3

I actually found a better way to send files using HttpURLConnection using MultipartEntity

private static String multipost(String urlString, MultipartEntity reqEntity) {
    try {
        URL url = new URL(urlString);
        HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        conn.setReadTimeout(10000);
        conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);
        conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
        conn.setUseCaches(false);
        conn.setDoInput(true);
        conn.setDoOutput(true);

        conn.setRequestProperty("Connection", "Keep-Alive");
        conn.addRequestProperty("Content-length", reqEntity.getContentLength()+"");
        conn.addRequestProperty(reqEntity.getContentType().getName(), reqEntity.getContentType().getValue());

        OutputStream os = conn.getOutputStream();
        reqEntity.writeTo(conn.getOutputStream());
        os.close();
        conn.connect();

        if (conn.getResponseCode() == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
            return readStream(conn.getInputStream());
        }

    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e(TAG, "multipart post error " + e + "(" + urlString + ")");
    }
    return null;        
}

private static String readStream(InputStream in) {
    BufferedReader reader = null;
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    try {
        reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
        String line = "";
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            builder.append(line);
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        if (reader != null) {
            try {
                reader.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
    return builder.toString();
} 

Assuming you are uploading an image with bitmap data:

    Bitmap bitmap = ...;
    String filename = "filename.png";
    ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.PNG, 100, bos);
    ContentBody contentPart = new ByteArrayBody(bos.toByteArray(), filename);

    MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);
    reqEntity.addPart("picture", contentPart);
    String response = multipost("http://server.com", reqEntity);

And Voila! Your post data will contain picture field along with the filename and path on your server.

Answer 4

I haven't tested this, but you might try using PipedInputStream and PipedOutputStream. It might look something like:

final Bitmap bmp = … // your bitmap

// Set up Piped streams
final PipedOutputStream pos = new PipedOutputStream(new ByteArrayOutputStream());
final PipedInputStream pis = new PipedInputStream(pos);

// Send bitmap data to the PipedOutputStream in a separate thread
new Thread() {
    public void run() {
        bmp.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.PNG, 100, pos);
    }
}.start();

// Send POST request
try {
    // Construct InputStreamEntity that feeds off of the PipedInputStream
    InputStreamEntity reqEntity = new InputStreamEntity(pis, -1);

    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url);
    reqEntity.setContentType("binary/octet-stream");
    reqEntity.setChunked(true);
    httppost.setEntity(reqEntity);
    HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
} catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace()
}

Answer 5

based on Mihai's solution, if anyone has the problem of saving images on the server like what happened on my server. change the Bitmap to bytebuffer part to :

ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG,100,bos);
        byte[] pixels = bos.toByteArray();

Answer 6

Here is what i did for uploading photo using post request.

public void uploadFile(int directoryID, String filePath) {
    Bitmap bitmapOrg = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(filePath);
    ByteArrayOutputStream bao = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

    String upload_url = BASE_URL + UPLOAD_FILE;
    bitmapOrg.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 90, bao);

    byte[] data = bao.toByteArray();

    HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost postRequest = new HttpPost(upload_url);
    MultipartEntity entity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);

    try {
        // Set Data and Content-type header for the image
        FileBody fb = new FileBody(new File(filePath), "image/jpeg");
        StringBody contentString = new StringBody(directoryID + "");

        entity.addPart("file", fb);
        entity.addPart("directory_id", contentString);
        postRequest.setEntity(entity);

        HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(postRequest);
        // Read the response
        String jsonString = EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity());
        Log.e("response after uploading file ", jsonString);

    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e("Error in uploadFile", e.getMessage());
    }
}

NOTE: This code requires libraries so Follow the instructions here in order to get the libraries.