Develop Reference

How to make Java HttpPost NOT include url in body

We have some old java code that POSTs some fields and values to a dotnet5 web api - The api is having problems dealing with the body of the POST as it includes the url/uri as the first part of the body.
The Java sends: http://127.0.0.1:5555?producerRef=GREEN&systemId=78&status=false
But the api is expecting something like: producerRef=GREEN&systemId=78&status=false
as per https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Methods/POST#example. If we send a test message via Postman then the api has no problems.
This is the Java code:
List<NameValuePair> params = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(queryParams.size());
for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : queryParams.entrySet()) {
params.add(new BasicNameValuePair(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue()));
}
// the address is just that, there's NO parameters
HttpPost post = new HttpPost(this.cmAddress.toURI());
post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params, "UTF-8"));
post.setHeader(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(post);
It's quite simple, but always adds the url to the start of the body of the request. If this is the only way to produce this, what could I do to produce something that looks like this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Methods/POST#example
Many Thanks.

This request seems like a GET request rather than a POST since the request params are in the URL. i don't know about the specifications of the Api you're using, but you can try OKHTTP, you can easily copy the code directly from postman
Postman Get example:

Your issue seems to be at below line
HttpPost post = new HttpPost(this.cmAddress.toURI());
This is the only place which will set the POST url ( another way is to use setURI which is not called anywhere in the code sample you have shared).
If you can use a debugger try checking the value of cmAdress variable

How do I add UrlEncodedFormEntity to a MultipartEntityBuilder

I have a file that I want to upload so I have your standard MultipartEntityBuilder like this:
MultipartEntityBuilder multiPartEntity = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
multiPartEntity.addBinaryBody("file", file);
I also have some form params that I send with the POST like this:
ArrayList<NameValuePair> postParameters = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
postParameters.add(new BasicNameValuePair("userId",userId));
postParameters.add(new BasicNameValuePair("taskId",taskId));
new UrlEncodedFormEntity(postParameters)
Both work individually, My question how do I do both in one call? I need to fold one into the other so I can make this in one HttpPost() call.

You seem to be confusing the application/x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data content types. When sending a multipart request, you are using multipart/form-data, in which case you don't need to URL encode the content. Just set the text directly
MultipartEntityBuilder multipartEntityBuilder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
multipartEntityBuilder.addBinaryBody("file", file);
multipartEntityBuilder.addTextBody("userId", "someIdWith#url$encodable<>characters");
See the specification for more details.

How can i change charset encoding in HTTP response in Java

I have to fetch some JSON object from a remote server and for that i am using this function which is working great except that for sometime some weird data is getting fetched which i believe is because it is using ASCII charset to decode.
Please find below thw method that i am using
public HttpResponse call(String serviceURL,String serviceHost,String namespace,String methodName,String payloadKey, String payloadValue) throws ClientProtocolException,IOException,JSONException
{
HttpResponse response = null;
HttpContext HTTP_CONTEXT = new BasicHttpContext();
HTTP_CONTEXT.setAttribute(CoreProtocolPNames.USER_AGENT, "Mozilla/5.0");
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(serviceURL);
httppost.setHeader("User-Agent",Constants.USER_AGENT_BROWSER_FIREFOX);
httppost.setHeader("Accept", "application/json, text/javascript, */*");
httppost.setHeader("Accept-Language","en-US,en;q=0.8");
httppost.setHeader("Content-Encoding", "foo-1.0");
httppost.setHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=UTF-8");
httppost.setHeader("X-Requested-With","XMLHttpRequest");
httppost.setHeader("Host",serviceHost);
httppost.setHeader("X-Foo-Target", String.format("%s.%s", namespace,methodName));
/*Making Payload*/
JSONObject objectForPayload = new JSONObject();
objectForPayload.put(payloadKey, payloadValue);
StringEntity stringentity = new StringEntity(objectForPayload.toString());
httppost.setEntity(stringentity);
response = client.execute(httppost);
return response;
}
All these headers that i am passing are correct and i have verified the same via inspect element in Google chrome or Firebug plugin if you are familiar with Mozilla.
Now the problem is that most of the time i am getting the readable data but sometimes i do get unreadable data.
I debugged using eclipse and noticed that the charset under wrappedEntity is showing as "US-ASCII". I am attaching a jpg for reference
Can someone please tell me how can i change the charset from ASCII to UTF-8 of the response before i do response = client.execute(httppost); .
PS:As you have noticed that i am passing charset=utf-8 in the header and that i have already verified using firebug and google chrome that i am passing the exact headers .
Please zoom in to see the image more clearly
Thanks in advance

i was able to resolve the issue just mentioning it for people that may face similar issue.
after getting the response first get the entity by using
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
and since my response was a json object convert entity to string but using "UTF-8" something like this
responseJsonObject = new JSONObject(EntityUtils.toString(entity,"UTF-8"));
previously i was just doing
responseJsonObject = new JSONObject(EntityUtils.toString(entity));

I don't think it's a problem with your headers, I think it's a problem with your string. Just having the header say it's utf-8 doesn't mean the string you write is utf-8, and that depends a lot on how the string was encoded and what's in the "payloadValue"
That said, you can always re-encode the thing correctly before sending it across the wire, for example:
objectForPayload.put(payloadKey, payloadValue);
StringEntity stringentity = new StringEntity(
new String(
objectForPayload.toString().getBytes(),
"UTF8"));
See if that works for you.

You may need to add an "Accept-Encoding"-header and set this to "UTF-8"

Just for the record: the "Content-Encoding" header field is incorrect - a correct server would reject the request as it contains an undefined content coding format.
Furthermore, attaching a charset parameter to application/json is meaningless.

bourne already answered that in the above comment though.
Changing entity = IOUtils.toString(response.getEntity().getContent())
TO entity = EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity(),"UTF-8")
did the trick.

Setting HttpClient POST Request body without "="

I need to make POST request with body like this:
{"a":[12345]}
If I try to build POST requests like this:
List <NameValuePair> nvps = new ArrayList <NameValuePair>();
nvps.add(new BasicNameValuePair("{\"u\":[123]}", ""));
httpost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nvps));
it, of course, makes a POST request body with a "=" delimeter
{"a":[12345]}=
How do I make it right?

Try using StringEntity, created with your JSON payload, instead of your current use of UrlEncodedFormEntity, NameValuePair et al.

# converted to %40 in HTTPPost request

i m trying to send post request to webservice..
when i add special character # in parameter it is coverted to %40.i have checked server side..they are getting %40 instead of #.
can any one help me??
here is my code..
httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("Email", "abc#gmail.com"));
httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
String response = httpclient.execute(httppost,responseHandler);
i have also tried this method to prevent my parameter from encoding.
httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs, HTTP.PLAIN_TEXT_TYPE));
but it raised unsupported encoded algorithm
pls help me out of this.

You're using UrlEncodedFormEntity, which will URL-encode the content. Turning # into %40 is normal with this encoding. The recipient should be able to decode that automatically, although you may have to use the correct content type for it to do so, probably application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

You can use
URLDecoder.decode("urlcontext", "UTF-8");
to remove any special character from the url which your passing

You need to use something such as URLDecoder on your server side so that you can convert the %40 back to #. The same applies for other special characters.

Use URLDecoder.decode(url) this will be helpful.

I'm definitly late for this party, but I had a similar issue. If you want to decode your url string you need to use decodeURIComponent(url). Where url is the string you are trying to decode.
W3schools does a great job of explaining it. https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/tryit.asp?filename=tryjsref_decodeuricomponent