Can't do a HTTP Post to a Web Service from my Android App

Question

I've been working on an app that uses both GET and POST requests to Web Services. The GET requests are no problems but the POST requests are killing me. I've tried 2 different scenarios in the code. The first looks like this...

 HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();  
 HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(ws);  
 JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject();

 try {  
// Add your data  
List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(2);  
jsonObject.put("action", "login");
jsonObject.put("username", "*********");
    jsonObject.put("password", "*********");

    httppost.setHeader("jsonString", jsonObject.toString());  
StringEntity se = new StringEntity( jsonObject.toString());    
se.setContentEncoding(new BasicHeader(HTTP.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/json"));  
httppost.setEntity(se); 


            // Execute HTTP Post Request  
            HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);  
            textview.setText(getResponse(response.getEntity()));
        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {  
            textview.setText(e.getLocalizedMessage());
        } catch (IOException e) {  
            textview.setText(e.getLocalizedMessage());
        } catch (JSONException e) {
            textview.setText(e.getLocalizedMessage());
        }

This code gets this result for me...
"Bad Request (Invalid Header Name)"

Now here's my second piece of code...

 HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();  
      HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(ws);  
      JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject();

        try {  
            // Add your data  
            List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(2);  
            jsonObject.put("action", "login");
            jsonObject.put("username", "******");
            jsonObject.put("password", "******");

            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("jsonString", jsonObject.toString()));
            httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));  

            // Execute HTTP Post Request  
            HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);  

            textview.setText(getResponse(response.getEntity()));
        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {  
            textview.setText(e.getLocalizedMessage());
        } catch (IOException e) {   
            textview.setText(e.getLocalizedMessage());
        } catch (JSONException e) {

        }

This gives me an entirely different result. It's a long garbled mess of xml and SOAP that does have a SOAP Exception mentioned in it...
"Server was unable to process request. --- System.Xml.XmlException: Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1."
Now, can anyone shed any light on what I am doing wrong.

Answer 1

in your second piece of code add ::

   // Execute HTTP Post Request  
    UrlEncodedFormEntity formEntity = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(postParameters, HTTP.UTF_8);
    httppost.setEntity(formEntity);
    HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);   

Answer 2

This is a bit old, but was having a similar issue myself. The first example is the route I went; and the problem with the original example was this line httppost.setHeader("jsonString", jsonObject.toString());. It's adding a Request Header which the server can't parse.

Additionally the declaration of nameValuePairs is unnecessary.