Posting a File and Associated Data to a RESTful WebService preferably as JSON

Question

This is probably going to be a stupid question but I\'m having one of those nights. In an application I am developing RESTful API and we want the client to send data as JSON

Answer 1

I know this question is old, but in the last days I had searched whole web to solution this same question. I have grails REST webservices and iPhone Client that send pictures, title and description.

I don't know if my approach is the best, but is so easy and simple.

I take a picture using the UIImagePickerController and send to server the NSData using the header tags of request to send the picture's data.

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"myServerAddress"]];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[request setHTTPBody:UIImageJPEGRepresentation(picture, 0.5)];
[request setValue:@"image/jpeg" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];
[request setValue:@"myPhotoTitle" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Photo-Title"];
[request setValue:@"myPhotoDescription" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Photo-Description"];

NSURLResponse *response;

NSError *error;

[NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:&response error:&error];

At the server side, I receive the photo using the code:

InputStream is = request.inputStream

def receivedPhotoFile = (IOUtils.toByteArray(is))

def photo = new Photo()
photo.photoFile = receivedPhotoFile //photoFile is a transient attribute
photo.title = request.getHeader("Photo-Title")
photo.description = request.getHeader("Photo-Description")
photo.imageURL = "temp"    

if (photo.save()) {    

    File saveLocation = grailsAttributes.getApplicationContext().getResource(File.separator + "images").getFile()
    saveLocation.mkdirs()

    File tempFile = File.createTempFile("photo", ".jpg", saveLocation)

    photo.imageURL = saveLocation.getName() + "/" + tempFile.getName()

    tempFile.append(photo.photoFile);

} else {

    println("Error")

}

I don't know if I have problems in future, but now is working fine in production environment.