cURL with Alamofire - Swift - multipart/form-data

Question

First, im sorry if this question is stupid but im pretty new to this stuff. I've tried different things to create the swift equivalent of this cURL request with Alamofire, but I don't know how to send the image as a multipart/form-data to the API.

curl -X POST -F "file=@/Users/nicolas/sample.png" -F "mode=document_photo" https://api.idolondemand.com/1/api/sync/ocrdocument/v1 -F "apikey=xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx"

I think current code is pretty wrong for this type of request, but still i'm gonna post it for you:

func getOCR(image: UIImage) {

    let url = "https://api.idolondemand.com/1/api/sync/ocrdocument/v1"
    let apiKey = "xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx"
    let imageData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(image)

    Alamofire.request(.POST, url, parameters: ["apikey": apiKey, "file": imageData!]).responseJSON() {
        _,_,JSON in
        print(JSON)
    }
}

The only way how it worked for me until now, was using a URL, but since I try to send a image to the server that the user took with the camera, i only can send a image file.

URL Code:

func test(url: NSURL) {

    let url = "https://api.idolondemand.com/1/api/sync/ocrdocument/v1"
    let apiKey = "xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx"

    Alamofire.request(.POST, url, parameters: ["apikey": apiKey, "url": url]).responseJSON() {
        _,JSON,_ in
        print(JSON)
    }
}

I would be happy if I get a response, because this is driving me crazy.

ps. Im using swift 2.0

Answer 1

Alamofire has an example in their documentation using Alamofire.upload(_:URLString:headers:multipartFormData:encodingMemoryThreshold:encodingCompletion:) that looks like it will answer your question (note that in their example, the headers and encodingMemoryThreshold parameters have a default value if you don't supply one).

Also see their documentation on the various appendBodyPart() methods on a MultipartFormData class instance.

So, a way in which your provided example code could be modified might be:

func getOCR(image: UIImage) {

  let url = "https://api.idolondemand.com/1/api/sync/ocrdocument/v1"
  let apiKey = "xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx"
  let mode = "document_photo"
  let imageData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(image)

  Alamofire.upload(
    .POST,
    URLString: url,
    multipartFormData: { multipartFormData in
      multipartFormData.appendBodyPart(
        data: apiKey.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)!,
        name: "apikey"
      )
      multipartFormData.appendBodyPart(
        data: mode.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)!,
        name: "mode"
      )
      multipartFormData.appendBodyPart(
        data: imageData!,
        name: "file",
        fileName: "testIMG.png",
        mimeType: "image/png"
      )
    },
    encodingCompletion: { encodingResult in
      switch encodingResult {
        case .Success(let upload, _, _):
          upload.responseJSON { _, _, JSON in println(JSON) }
        case .Failure(let encodingError):
          println(encodingError)
      }
    }
  )
}