Android default charset when sending http post/put - Problems with special characters

Question

I have configured the apache httpClient like so:

HttpProtocolParams.setContentCharset(httpParameters, \"UTF-8\");
HttpProtocolParams.setHttpElementCharset(ht         


        

Answer 1

You can eliminate the server as the problem by using curl to send the same data. If it works with curl use --trace to check the output.

Ensure you are sending the content body as bytes. Compare the HTTP request from Android with the output from the successful curl request.

Answer 2

I know this post is a bit old but nevertheless here is a solution:

Here is my code for posting UTF-8 strings (it doesn't matter if they are xml soap or json) to a server. I tried it with cyrillic, hash values and some other special characters and it works like a charm. It is a compilation of many solutions I found through the forums.

HttpParams httpParameters = new BasicHttpParams();
HttpProtocolParams.setContentCharset(httpParameters, HTTP.UTF_8);
HttpProtocolParams.setHttpElementCharset(httpParameters, HTTP.UTF_8);

HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(httpParameters);
client.getParams().setParameter("http.protocol.version", HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
client.getParams().setParameter("http.socket.timeout", new Integer(2000));
client.getParams().setParameter("http.protocol.content-charset", HTTP.UTF_8);
httpParameters.setBooleanParameter("http.protocol.expect-continue", false);
HttpPost request = new HttpPost("http://www.server.com/some_script.php?sid=" + String.valueOf(Math.random()));
request.getParams().setParameter("http.socket.timeout", new Integer(5000));

List<NameValuePair> postParameters = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
// you get this later in php with $_POST['value_name']
postParameters.add(new BasicNameValuePair("value_name", "value_val"));

UrlEncodedFormEntity formEntity = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(postParameters, HTTP.UTF_8);
request.setEntity(formEntity);
HttpResponse response = client.execute(request);

in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()));
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("");
String line = "";
String lineSeparator = System.getProperty("line.separator");
while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
    sb.append(line);
    sb.append(lineSeparator);
}
in.close();
String result = sb.toString();

I hope that someone will find this code helpful. :)

Answer 3

You should set charset of your string entity to UTF-8:

StringEntity stringEntity = new StringEntity(urlParameters, HTTP.UTF_8);

Answer 4

Apparently, I forgot to set the StringEntity's charset to UTF-8. These lines did the trick:

    httpPut.setEntity(new StringEntity(body, HTTP.UTF_8));
    httpPost.setEntity(new StringEntity(body, HTTP.UTF_8));

So, there are at least two levels to set the charset in the Android client when sending an http post with non-ascii characters.

1. The rest client itself itself
2. The StringEntity

UPDATE: As Samuel pointed out in the comments, the modern way to do it is to use a ContentType, like so:

    final StringEntity se = new StringEntity(body, ContentType.APPLICATION_JSON);
    httpPut.setEntity(se);