How to send json data in the Http request using NSURLRequest

Here's what I do (please note that the JSON going to my server needs to be a dictionary with one value (another dictionary) for key = question..i.e. {:question => { dictionary } } ):

NSArray *objects = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]valueForKey:@"StoreNickName"],
  [[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier], [dict objectForKey:@"user_question"],     nil];
NSArray *keys = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"nick_name", @"UDID", @"user_question", nil];
NSDictionary *questionDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:objects forKeys:keys];

NSDictionary *jsonDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:questionDict forKey:@"question"];

NSString *jsonRequest = [jsonDict JSONRepresentation];

NSLog(@"jsonRequest is %@", jsonRequest);

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://xxxxxxx.com/questions"];

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url
             cachePolicy:NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy timeoutInterval:60.0];


NSData *requestData = [jsonRequest dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[request setValue:@"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Accept"];
[request setValue:@"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];
[request setValue:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", [requestData length]] forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Length"];
[request setHTTPBody: requestData];

NSURLConnection *connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc]initWithRequest:request delegate:self];
if (connection) {
 receivedData = [[NSMutableData data] retain];
}

The receivedData is then handled by:

NSString *jsonString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSDictionary *jsonDict = [jsonString JSONValue];
NSDictionary *question = [jsonDict objectForKey:@"question"];

This isn't 100% clear and will take some re-reading, but everything should be here to get you started. And from what I can tell, this is asynchronous. My UI is not locked up while these calls are made. Hope that helps.

I struggled with this for a while. Running PHP on the server. This code will post a json and get the json reply from the server

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://example.co/index.php"];
NSMutableURLRequest *rq = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[rq setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
NSString *post = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"command1=c1&command2=c2"];
NSData *postData = [post dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
[rq setHTTPBody:postData];
[rq setValue:@"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];
NSOperationQueue *queue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init];

[NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:rq queue:queue completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *error)
 {
     if ([data length] > 0 && error == nil){
         NSError *parseError = nil;
         NSDictionary *dictionary = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data options:0 error:&parseError];
         NSLog(@"Server Response (we want to see a 200 return code) %@",response);
         NSLog(@"dictionary %@",dictionary);
     }
     else if ([data length] == 0 && error == nil){
         NSLog(@"no data returned");
         //no data, but tried
     }
     else if (error != nil)
     {
         NSLog(@"there was a download error");
         //couldn't download

     }
 }];

I would suggest to use ASIHTTPRequest

ASIHTTPRequest is an easy to use wrapper around the CFNetwork API that makes some of the more tedious aspects of communicating with web servers easier. It is written in Objective-C and works in both Mac OS X and iPhone applications.

It is suitable performing basic HTTP requests and interacting with REST-based services (GET / POST / PUT / DELETE). The included ASIFormDataRequest subclass makes it easy to submit POST data and files using multipart/form-data.

Please note, that the original author discontinued with this project. See the followring post for reasons and alternatives: http://allseeing-i.com/%5Brequest_release%5D;

Personally I am a big fan of AFNetworking