iPhone Development: Use POST to submit a form

Question

I've got the following html form:

<form method="post" action="http://shk.ecomd.de/up.php" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="hidden" name="id" value="12345" />
<input type="file" name="pic" />
<input type="submit" />
</form>

And the following iPhone SDK Submit method:

- (void)sendfile {
  UIImage *tempImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"image.jpg"];

  NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init];
  [request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
  [request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://url..../form.php"]];


  NSString *boundary = @"------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY";
  NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@",boundary];
  [request addValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];



  NSMutableData *body = [NSMutableData data];
  [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n%@\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"id\"\r\n\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[@"12345" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n%@\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];

  [body appendData:[@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"pic\"; filename=\"photo.png\"\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[@"Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[NSData dataWithData:UIImageJPEGRepresentation(tempImage, 90)]];

  [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n%@",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  // setting the body of the post to the reqeust
  [request setHTTPBody:body];

  NSError *error;
  NSURLResponse *response;
  NSData* result = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:&response error:&error];

  NSString* aStr = [[[NSString alloc] initWithData:result encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding] autorelease];

  NSLog(@"Result: %@", aStr);

  [request release];    
}

This does not work, but I have no clue why. Can you please help me?!! What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Download http://www.charlesproxy.com/

Try to perform the same POST action from your browser and from the iPhone simulator and see what the differences are.

Answer 2

You set filename as photo.png but using JPEG data. May be problem in this?

Answer 3

<?php

require_once '__config.php';

if ($_FILES) {
 if ($_FILES['pic']['type']=="image/jpeg" && intval($_POST['id'])>0) {
   copy($_FILES['pic']['tmp_name'],$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/u/'.intval($_POST['id']).'.jpg');
   $query="update tleistung set bild=1 where id=".intval($_POST['id']);
   $res=$db->exec($query);
   die('/u/'.intval($_POST['id']).'.jpg');
 }
}
die("nicht erfolgreich!");

?>

This is the PHP-Code and I always get "nicht erfolgreich!"

And no: I changed the filename to photo.jpg - no change...

I monitored the Request and got the following POST:

POST /up.php HTTP/1.1
Host: url...
User-Agent: iDeXs/0.97 CFNetwork/445.6 Darwin/10.3.0
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY
Referer: http://url.../up.php
Content-Length: 380606
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: de-de
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: keep-alive

------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="id"

12345
------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="pic"; filename="photo.jpg"
Content-Type: image/jpeg

ˇÿˇ‡

Answer 4

It looks like your request is missing the terminating boundary marker. Per RFC 2046, each part of a multi-part mime message needs to be preceded by a boundary marker. The last part needs to be closed with a final boundary marker. The final boundary marker has "--" appended to it to indicate that no parts follow. Try this code:

- (void)sendfile {
  UIImage *tempImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"image.jpg"];

  NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init];
  [request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
  [request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://url..../form.php"]];


  NSString *boundary = @"------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY";
  NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@",boundary];
  [request addValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];



  NSMutableData *body = [NSMutableData data];
  [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n%@\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"id\"\r\n\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[@"12345" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n%@\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];

  [body appendData:[@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"pic\"; filename=\"photo.png\"\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[@"Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  [body appendData:[NSData dataWithData:UIImageJPEGRepresentation(tempImage, 90)]];

  [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n%@",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
  // setting the body of the post to the reqeust
  [request setHTTPBody:body];

  //add terminating boundary marker
  [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n%@--",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];

  NSError *error;
  NSURLResponse *response;
  NSData* result = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:&response error:&error];

  NSString* aStr = [[[NSString alloc] initWithData:result encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding] autorelease];

  NSLog(@"Result: %@", aStr);

  [request release];    
}

Answer 5

Thank you EricM,

that solved the problem!