How can I make a multipart/form-data POST request using Java?

Question

In the days of version 3.x of Apache Commons HttpClient, making a multipart/form-data POST request was possible (an example from 2004). Unfortunately this is no longer possi

Answer 1

We use HttpClient 4.x to make multipart file post.

UPDATE: As of HttpClient 4.3, some classes have been deprecated. Here is the code with new API:

CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClients.createDefault();
HttpPost uploadFile = new HttpPost("...");
MultipartEntityBuilder builder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
builder.addTextBody("field1", "yes", ContentType.TEXT_PLAIN);

// This attaches the file to the POST:
File f = new File("[/path/to/upload]");
builder.addBinaryBody(
    "file",
    new FileInputStream(f),
    ContentType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM,
    f.getName()
);

HttpEntity multipart = builder.build();
uploadFile.setEntity(multipart);
CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(uploadFile);
HttpEntity responseEntity = response.getEntity();

Below is the original snippet of code with deprecated HttpClient 4.0 API:

HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url);

FileBody bin = new FileBody(new File(fileName));
StringBody comment = new StringBody("Filename: " + fileName);

MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
reqEntity.addPart("bin", bin);
reqEntity.addPart("comment", comment);
httppost.setEntity(reqEntity);

HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
HttpEntity resEntity = response.getEntity();