Changing Content-Type to JSON using HTTParty

Question

I am trying to use Ruby on Rails to communicate with the Salesforce API. I can fetch data easily enough but I am having problems posting data to the server. I am using HTTParty as per Quinton Wall's post here:

https://github.com/quintonwall/omniauth-rails3-forcedotcom/wiki/Build-Mobile-Apps-in-the-Cloud-with-Omniauth,-Httparty-and-Force.com

but all I seem to be able to get from the salesforce server is the error that I am submitting the body as html

{"message"=>"MediaType of 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' is not supported by this resource", "errorCode"=>"UNSUPPORTED_MEDIA_TYPE"}

the responsible code looks like:

require 'rubygems'
require 'httparty'

class Accounts
  include HTTParty
  format :json

  ...[set headers and root_url etc]

  def self.save
    Accounts.set_headers
    response = (post(Accounts.root_url+"/sobjects/Account/", :body => {:name => "graham"}.to_json))
  end
end

anyone have an idea why the body should be being posted as html and how to change this so that it definitely goes as json so that salesforce doesn't reject it?

Any help would be appreciated. cheers

Answer 1

You have to set the Content-Type header to application/json. I haven't used HTTParty, but it looks like you have to do something like

response = (post(Accounts.root_url+"/sobjects/Account/", :body => {:name => "graham"}.to_json) , :options => { :headers => { 'Content-Type' => 'application/json' } } )

I'm somewhat surpised that the format option doesn't do this automatically.

Answer 2

The Content-Type header needs to be set to "application/json". This can be done by inserting :headers => {'Content-Type' => 'application/json'} as a parameter to post, ie:

response = post(Accounts.root_url+"/sobjects/Account/", 
  :body => {:name => "graham"}.to_json,
  :headers => {'Content-Type' => 'application/json'} )