Using HttpClient and HttpPost in Android with post parameters

I'm writing code for an Android application that is supposed to take data, package it as Json and post it to a web server, that in turn is supposed to respond with json.

Using a GET request works fine, but for some reason using POST all data seems to get stripped and the server does not receive anything.

Here's a snippet of the code:

HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, 5000);
HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, 5000);        
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);
BasicCookieStore cookieStore = new BasicCookieStore();
httpClient.setCookieStore(cookieStore);

String uri = JSON_ADDRESS;
String result = "";
String username = "user";
String apikey = "something";
String contentType = "application/json";

JSONObject jsonObj = new JSONObject();

try {
    jsonObj.put("username", username);
    jsonObj.put("apikey", apikey);
} catch (JSONException e) {
    Log.e(TAG, "JSONException: " + e);
}

HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(uri);
List<NameValuePair> postParams = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
postParams.add(new BasicNameValuePair("json", jsonObj.toString()));
HttpGet httpGet = null;
try {
    UrlEncodedFormEntity entity = new UrlEncodedFormEntity(postParams);
    entity.setContentEncoding(HTTP.UTF_8);
    entity.setContentType("application/json");
    httpPost.setEntity(entity);

    httpPost.setHeader("Content-Type", contentType);
    httpPost.setHeader("Accept", contentType);
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
    Log.e(TAG, "UnsupportedEncodingException: " + e);
}

try {
    HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
    HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();

    if (httpEntity != null) {
        InputStream is = httpEntity.getContent();
        result = StringUtils.convertStreamToString(is);
        Log.i(TAG, "Result: " + result);
    }
} catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
    Log.e(TAG, "ClientProtocolException: " + e);
} catch (IOException e) {
    Log.e(TAG, "IOException: " + e);
}

return result;

I think I have followed the general guidelines on how to create the parameters and post them, but apparently not.

Any help or pointers to where I can find a solution, are very welcome at this point (after spending a few hours realizing no post data was ever sent). The real server is running Wicket on Tomcat, but I've also tested it out on a simple PHP page, with no difference.

You can actually send it as JSON the following way:

// Build the JSON object to pass parameters
JSONObject jsonObj = new JSONObject();
jsonObj.put("username", username);
jsonObj.put("apikey", apikey);
// Create the POST object and add the parameters
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
StringEntity entity = new StringEntity(jsonObj.toString(), HTTP.UTF_8);
entity.setContentType("application/json");
httpPost.setEntity(entity);
HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpPost);

have you tried doing it without the JSON object and just passed two basicnamevaluepairs? also, it might have something to do with your serversettings

Update: this is a piece of code I use:

InputStream is = null;
ArrayList<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
    nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("lastupdate", lastupdate)); 

try {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(connection);
        httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        is = entity.getContent();
        Log.d("HTTP", "HTTP: OK");
    } catch (Exception e) {
        Log.e("HTTP", "Error in http connection " + e.toString());
    }