Apache HttpClient making multipart form post

Solution 1:

Use MultipartEntityBuilder from the HttpMime library to perform the request you want.

In my project I do that this way:

HttpEntity entity = MultipartEntityBuilder
    .create()
    .addTextBody("number", "5555555555")
    .addTextBody("clip", "rickroll")
    .addBinaryBody("upload_file", new File(filePath), ContentType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM, "filename")
    .addTextBody("tos", "agree")
    .build();

HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("http://some-web-site");
httpPost.setEntity(entity);
HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
HttpEntity result = response.getEntity();

Hope this will help.

(Updated this post to use MultipartEntityBuilder instead of deprecated MultipartEntity, using @mtomy code as the example)

Solution 2:

MultipartEntity now shows up as deprecated. I am using apache httpclient 4.3.3 - does anyone know what we are supposed to use instead? I find the google searches to be so full of MultipartEntity examples I can't find anything. – vextorspace Mar 31 '14 at 20:36

Here is the sample code in HttpClient 4.3.x

http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-4.3.x/httpmime/examples/org/apache/http/examples/entity/mime/ClientMultipartFormPost.java

import org.apache.http.entity.mime.MultipartEntityBuilder;

HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://localhost:8080" +
        "/servlets-examples/servlet/RequestInfoExample");

FileBody bin = new FileBody(new File(args[0]));
StringBody comment = new StringBody("A binary file of some kind", ContentType.TEXT_PLAIN);

HttpEntity reqEntity = MultipartEntityBuilder.create()
        .addPart("bin", bin)
        .addPart("comment", comment)
        .build();


httppost.setEntity(reqEntity);

To use the class MultipartEntityBuilder, you need httpmime, which is a sub project of HttpClient

HttpClient 4.3.x:

http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-4.3.x/index.html

httpmime 4.3.x:

http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-4.3.x/httpmime/dependency-info.html

Solution 3:

if use org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient package, maybe that can help you!

    HttpConnectionManager httpConnectionManager = new MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager();
    //here should set HttpConnectionManagerParams but not important for you
    HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(httpConnectionManager);

    PostMethod postMethod = new PostMethod("http://localhost/media");

    FilePart filePart = new FilePart("file", new File(filepath));
    StringPart typePart = new StringPart("type", fileContent.getType(), "utf-8");
    StringPart fileNamePart = new StringPart("fileName", fileContent.getFileName(), "utf-8");
    StringPart timestampPart = new StringPart("timestamp", ""+fileContent.getTimestamp(),"utf-8");
    Part[] parts = { typePart, fileNamePart, timestampPart, filePart };

    MultipartRequestEntity multipartRequestEntity = new MultipartRequestEntity(parts, postMethod.getParams());
    postMethod.setRequestEntity(multipartRequestEntity);
    httpClient.executeMethod(postMethod);
    String responseStr = postMethod.getResponseBodyAsString();