[android] Post multipart request with Android SDK

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!

I highly recommend Loopj.

I have successfully used it to upload multiple files at once, including different mime types. Simply do this:

File myVideo = new File("/path/to/myvideo.mp4");
File myPic = new File("/path/to/mypic.jpg");
RequestParams params = new RequestParams();
try {
  params.put("profile_picture", myPic);
  params.put("my_video", myVideo);
} catch(FileNotFoundException e) {}

For large or many files you might have to increase the timeout amount else the default timeout is used which might be too short:

client.setTimeout(500000) //make this the appropriate timeout in milliseconds

Please see this links for a full description of loopj and how to use it, by far the easiest async http library I have come across:

http://loopj.com/android-async-http/ http://loopj.com/android-async-http/doc/com/loopj/android/http/AsyncHttpClient.html

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"]);

?>

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();
}

Try this:

    public void SendMultipartFile() {
    Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: SendMultipartFile");
    DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost( <url> );

    File file = new File("/sdcard/spider.jpg");

    Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: setting up multipart entity");

    MultipartEntity mpEntity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);
    Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: file length = " + file.length());
    Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: file exist = " + file.exists());

    try {
        mpEntity.addPart("datafile", new FileBody(file, "application/octet"));
        mpEntity.addPart("id", new StringBody("1"));
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e1) {
        Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: UnsupportedEncodingException");
        e1.printStackTrace();
    }

    httppost.setEntity(mpEntity);
    Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: executing request: " + httppost.getRequestLine());
    Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: request: " + httppost.getEntity().getContentType().toString());


    HttpResponse response;
    try {
        Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: about to execute");
        response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
        Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: executed");
        HttpEntity resEntity = response.getEntity();
        Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: respose code: " + response.getStatusLine().toString());
        if (resEntity != null) {
            Log.d(TAG, "UPLOAD: " + EntityUtils.toString(resEntity));
        }
        if (resEntity != null) {
            resEntity.consumeContent();
        }
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

For posterity, I didn't see okhttp mentioned. Related post.

Basically you build up the body using a MultipartBody.Builder, and then post this in a request.

Example in kotlin:

    val body = MultipartBody.Builder()
            .setType(MultipartBody.FORM)
            .addFormDataPart(
                "file", 
                file.getName(),
                RequestBody.create(MediaType.parse("image/png"), file)
            )
            .addFormDataPart("timestamp", Date().time.toString())
            .build()

    val request = Request.Builder()
            .url(url)
            .post(body)
            .build()

    httpClient.newCall(request).enqueue(object : okhttp3.Callback {
        override fun onFailure(call: Call?, e: IOException?) {
            ...
        }

        override fun onResponse(call: Call?, response: Response?) {
            ...
        }
    })

More easy, light (32k), and many more performance:

Android Asynchronous Http Client library: http://loopj.com/android-async-http/

Implementation:

How to send a “multipart/form-data” POST in Android with Volley

I can recomend Ion library it use 3 dependences and you can find all three jar files at these two sites:
https://github.com/koush/ion#jars (ion and androidasync)

try {
   Ion.with(this, "http://www.urlthatyouwant.com/post/page")
   .setMultipartParameter("field1", "This is field number 1")
   .setMultipartParameter("field2", "Field 2 is shorter")
   .setMultipartFile("imagefile",
        new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()+"/testfile.jpg"))
   .asString()
   .setCallback(new FutureCallback<String>() {
        @Override
        public void onCompleted(Exception e, String result) {
             System.out.println(result);
        }});
   } catch(Exception e) {
     // Do something about exceptions
        System.out.println("exception: " + e);
   }

this will run async and the callback will be executed in the UI thread once a response is received I strongly recomned that you go to the https://github.com/koush/ion for futher information

You can you use GentleRequest, which is lightweight library for making http requests(DISCLAIMER: I am the author):

Connections connections = new HttpConnections();
Binary binary = new PacketsBinary(new 
BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(file)), 
   file.length());
//Content-Type is set to multipart/form-data; boundary= 
//{generated by multipart object}
MultipartForm multipart = new HttpMultipartForm(
    new HttpFormPart("user", "aplication/json", 
       new JSONObject().toString().getBytes()),
    new HttpFormPart("java", "java.png", "image/png", 
       binary.content()));
Response response = connections.response(new 
    PostRequest(url, multipart));
if (response.hasSuccessCode()) {
    byte[] raw = response.body().value();
    String string = response.body().stringValue();
    JSONOBject json = response.body().jsonValue();
 } else {

 }

Feel free to check it out: https://github.com/Iprogrammerr/Gentle-Request

Remove all your httpclient, httpmime dependency and add this dependency compile 'commons-httpclient:commons-httpclient:3.1'. This dependency has built in MultipartRequestEntity so that you can easily upload one or more files to the server

public class FileUploadUrlConnection extends AsyncTask<String, String, String> {
private Context context;
private String url;
private List<File> files;

public FileUploadUrlConnection(Context context, String url, List<File> files) {
    this.context = context;
    this.url = url;
    this.files = files;
}

@Override
protected String doInBackground(String... params) {

    HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
    PostMethod post = new PostMethod(url);
    HttpClientParams connectionParams = new HttpClientParams();

    post.setRequestHeader(// Your header goes here );

    try {
        Part[] parts = new Part[files.size()];
        for (int i=0; i<files.size(); i++) {
            Part part = new FilePart(files.get(i).getName(), files.get(i));
            parts[i] = part;
        }

        MultipartRequestEntity entity = new MultipartRequestEntity(parts, connectionParams);

        post.setRequestEntity(entity);

        int statusCode = client.executeMethod(post);
        String response = post.getResponseBodyAsString();

        Log.v("Multipart "," "+response);
        if(statusCode == 200) {
            return response;
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } 
 return null;
}

You can also add the request and response timeout

client.getParams().setParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.CONNECTION_TIMEOUT, 10000);
client.getParams().setParameter(CoreConnectionPNames.SO_TIMEOUT, 10000);

public class Multipart{
    private final Map<String, String> headrs;
    private String url;
    private HttpURLConnection con;
    private OutputStream os;

    private String delimiter = "--";
    private String boundary = "TRR" + Long.toString(System.currentTimeMillis()) + "TRR";

    public Multipart (String url, Map<String, String> headers) {
        this.url = url;
        this.headrs = headers;
    }

    public void connectForMultipart() throws Exception {
        con = (HttpURLConnection) (new URL(url)).openConnection();
        con.setRequestMethod("POST");
        con.setDoInput(true);
        con.setDoOutput(true);
        con.setRequestProperty("Connection", "Keep-Alive");
        for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : headrs.entrySet()) {
            con.setRequestProperty(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
        }
        con.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary);
        con.connect();
        os = con.getOutputStream();
    }

    public void addFormPart(String paramName, String value) throws Exception {
        writeParamData(paramName, value);
    }

    public void addFilePart(String paramName, String fileName, byte[] data) throws Exception {
        os.write((delimiter + boundary + "\r\n").getBytes());
        os.write(("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + paramName + "\"; filename=\"" + fileName + "\"\r\n").getBytes());
        os.write(("Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n").getBytes());
        os.write(("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary\r\n").getBytes());
        os.write("\r\n".getBytes());

        os.write(data);

        os.write("\r\n".getBytes());
    }

    public void finishMultipart() throws Exception {
        os.write((delimiter + boundary + delimiter + "\r\n").getBytes());
    }


    public String getResponse() throws Exception {
        InputStream is = con.getInputStream();
        byte[] b1 = new byte[1024];
        StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();

        while (is.read(b1) != -1)
            buffer.append(new String(b1));

        con.disconnect();

        return buffer.toString();
    }


    private void writeParamData(String paramName, String value) throws Exception {


        os.write((delimiter + boundary + "\r\n").getBytes());
        os.write("Content-Type: text/plain\r\n".getBytes());//;charset=utf-8
        os.write(("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + paramName + "\"\r\n").getBytes());
        ;
        os.write(("\r\n" + value + "\r\n").getBytes());


    }
}

Then call below

Multipart multipart = new Multipart(url__, map);
            multipart .connectForMultipart();
multipart .addFormPart(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
multipart .addFilePart(KeyName, "FileName", imagedata);
multipart .finishMultipart();

Here is a Simple approach if you are using the AOSP library Volley.

Extend the class Request<T> as follows-

public class MultipartRequest extends Request<String> {
    private static final String FILE_PART_NAME = "file";
    private final Response.Listener<String> mListener;
    private final Map<String, File> mFilePart;
    private final Map<String, String> mStringPart;
    MultipartEntityBuilder entity = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
    HttpEntity httpentity;

    public MultipartRequest(String url, Response.ErrorListener errorListener,
                            Response.Listener<String> listener, Map<String, File> file,
                            Map<String, String> mStringPart) {
        super(Method.POST, url, errorListener);
        mListener = listener;
        mFilePart = file;
        this.mStringPart = mStringPart;
        entity.setMode(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);
        buildMultipartEntity();
    }

    public void addStringBody(String param, String value) {
        mStringPart.put(param, value);
    }

    private void buildMultipartEntity() {
        for (Map.Entry<String, File> entry : mFilePart.entrySet()) {
            // entity.addPart(entry.getKey(), new FileBody(entry.getValue(), ContentType.create("image/jpeg"), entry.getKey()));
            try {
                entity.addBinaryBody(entry.getKey(), Utils.toByteArray(new FileInputStream(entry.getValue())), ContentType.create("image/jpeg"), entry.getKey() + ".JPG");
            } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : mStringPart.entrySet()) {
            if (entry.getKey() != null && entry.getValue() != null) {
                entity.addTextBody(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
            }
        }
    }

    @Override
    public String getBodyContentType() {
        return httpentity.getContentType().getValue();
    }

    @Override
    public byte[] getBody() throws AuthFailureError {
        ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        try {
            httpentity = entity.build();
            httpentity.writeTo(bos);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            VolleyLog.e("IOException writing to ByteArrayOutputStream");
        }
        return bos.toByteArray();
    }

    @Override
    protected Response<String> parseNetworkResponse(NetworkResponse response) {
        Log.d("Response", new String(response.data));
        return Response.success(new String(response.data), getCacheEntry());
    }

    @Override
    protected void deliverResponse(String response) {
        mListener.onResponse(response);
    }
}

You can create and add a request like-

Map<String, String> params = new HashMap<>();
        params.put("name", name.getText().toString());
        params.put("email", email.getText().toString());
        params.put("user_id", appPreferences.getInt( Utils.PROPERTY_USER_ID, -1) + "");
        params.put("password", password.getText().toString());
        params.put("imageName", pictureName);
        Map<String, File> files = new HashMap<>();
        files.put("photo", new File(Utils.LOCAL_RESOURCE_PATH + pictureName));
        MultipartRequest multipartRequest = new MultipartRequest(Utils.BASE_URL + "editprofile/" + appPreferences.getInt(Utils.PROPERTY_USER_ID, -1), new Response.ErrorListener() {
            @Override
            public void onErrorResponse(VolleyError error) {
                // TODO Auto-generated method stub
                Log.d("Error: ", error.toString());
                FugaDialog.showErrorDialog(ProfileActivity.this);
            }
        }, new Response.Listener<String>() {
            @Override
            public void onResponse(String jsonResponse) {
                JSONObject response = null;
                try {
                    Log.d("jsonResponse: ", jsonResponse);
                    response = new JSONObject(jsonResponse);

                } catch (JSONException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
                try {
                    if (response != null && response.has("statusmessage") && response.getBoolean("statusmessage")) {
                        updateLocalRecord();

                    }
                } catch (JSONException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
                FugaDialog.dismiss();
            }

        }, files, params);
        RequestQueue queue = Volley.newRequestQueue(this);
        queue.add(multipartRequest);