Sending files using POST with HttpURLConnection

Question

Since the Android developers recommend to use the HttpURLConnection class, I was wondering if anyone can provide me with a good example on how to send a bitmap

Answer 1

I actually found a better way to send files using HttpURLConnection using MultipartEntity

private static String multipost(String urlString, MultipartEntity reqEntity) {
    try {
        URL url = new URL(urlString);
        HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        conn.setReadTimeout(10000);
        conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);
        conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
        conn.setUseCaches(false);
        conn.setDoInput(true);
        conn.setDoOutput(true);

        conn.setRequestProperty("Connection", "Keep-Alive");
        conn.addRequestProperty("Content-length", reqEntity.getContentLength()+"");
        conn.addRequestProperty(reqEntity.getContentType().getName(), reqEntity.getContentType().getValue());

        OutputStream os = conn.getOutputStream();
        reqEntity.writeTo(conn.getOutputStream());
        os.close();
        conn.connect();

        if (conn.getResponseCode() == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
            return readStream(conn.getInputStream());
        }

    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e(TAG, "multipart post error " + e + "(" + urlString + ")");
    }
    return null;        
}

private static String readStream(InputStream in) {
    BufferedReader reader = null;
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    try {
        reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
        String line = "";
        while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            builder.append(line);
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        if (reader != null) {
            try {
                reader.close();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
    return builder.toString();
} 

Assuming you are uploading an image with bitmap data:

    Bitmap bitmap = ...;
    String filename = "filename.png";
    ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.PNG, 100, bos);
    ContentBody contentPart = new ByteArrayBody(bos.toByteArray(), filename);

    MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);
    reqEntity.addPart("picture", contentPart);
    String response = multipost("http://server.com", reqEntity);

And Voila! Your post data will contain picture field along with the filename and path on your server.