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To make things easier I’ve refactored the ideas below into a generic Uploader class. I’ve also included a working PHP web application to receive uploads. See HTTPFileUploadSample. —-

I would like to upload a file using HTTP POST and Objective C’s built-in NSMutableURLRequest. Ideally I would like to send a multipart POST message which contains a few regular name/value fields, followed by one file upload. Here’s the code I have so far, which sends one regular name/value field via POST:

// url is set to be some URL string. NSMutableURLRequest* post = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL: [NSURL URLWithString: url]]; [post setHTTPMethod: @”POST”]; [post setHTTPBody: [[[NSString alloc] initWithString: @”name=dude”] dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]]; NSMutableData* theData = [[NSMutableData data] retain]; NSURLConnection* theConnection = [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest: post delegate: self]; [theConnection retain];

I’m not using CurlHandle (see this page, POSTMethodANDNSURLRequest) because I’d rather use what’s built-in already.

So, me again. I still don’t have file uploading yet, but now I have multipart forms. Here’s my code for that:

NSMutableURLRequest* post = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL: [NSURL URLWithString: url]]; NSString* regData = [HTMLTalk nameValString: [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: @”val1”, @”field1”, @”val2”, @”field2”, nil]]; [post addValue: @”multipart/form-data; boundary=0194784892923” forHTTPHeaderField: @”Content-Type”]; [post setHTTPMethod: @”POST”]; [post setHTTPBody: [regData dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]]; theData = [[NSMutableData data] retain]; theConnection = [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest: post delegate: self]; [theConnection retain];

I am having the same problem. Does anyone know how to POST a file - with or without using cURLHandle?

Ok here’s something I quickly threw together (read: not optimized, not much errorhandling)

NSMutableDictionary* post_dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithCapacity:2]; [post_dict setObject:@”test_value” forKey:@”test_key”]; [post_dict setObject:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:@”/Butterfly.tif”] forKey:@”file1”]; NSData* regData = [self generateFormData:post_dict]; [post_dict release];

NSMutableURLRequest* post = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL: [NSURL URLWithString:@”http://yourdomain.com/post.php”]]; [post addValue: @”multipart/form-data; boundary=insert_some_boundary_here” forHTTPHeaderField: @”Content-Type”]; [post setHTTPMethod: @”POST”]; [post setHTTPBody:regData]; NSURLResponse* response; NSError* error; NSData* result = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:post returningResponse:&response error:&error]; NSLog(@”%@”, [[[NSString alloc] initWithData:result encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding] autorelease]);

// php page :

<?php print_r($_POST); $destfile = “/Webserver/upload/test.tif”; if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES[‘file1’][‘tmp_name’], $destfile)) { echo “SUCCESS”; exit; } echo “FAILURE”; ?>

So just put either an NSURL or an NSString into a dictionary and run it through the function. I don’t know if dumping the file contents like that is RFC compliant. If somebody feels like looking it up, be my guest. I tested it on my server and it worked. – KasPer

Sorry, just to let you guys know that KasPer’s code does not work for me. Even though the server responds as if everything was ok, no values were uploaded. I tried changing the ‘boundary’ values, and the encoding to utf-8 instead of ascii, but it won’t work… I have NMS’s TFMail.pl as the form-processing cgi on my site. It is setup properly, and currently processes ‘normal’ file uploads done via HTML forms. I would love to be able to post information directly from inside my Cocoa apps. I thought your code would have worked, but… Please, keep trying! Network newbies like us haven’t got a chance in the world of making this happen…

Make sure you have permissions on your web host to upload. Make sure it works through a normal HTMl form first before attempting to do it in Cocoa.

Thanks for the hints! Unfortunately, the cgi I’m using works perfectly when the submission comes from a simple form in Safari. I don’t think this is a problem on my server. I tried a very simple http POST request emulation, and I still cannot get it to work. I posted a message to Apple’s ‘webkitsdk’ mailing list, but so far have not received any replies… Here is what I tried to do:

I attempted to setup a very simple interface - one button, and one WebView. The WebView is called ‘htmlView’. When the button is clicked, it triggers the following method - which is largely based on the sample code above:

As you can see, all values have been hardcoded at this stage, to avoid any problems with interface, bindings, etc. - I just want to concentrate on getting the network communications happening… As you can see, it is intended to emulate the posting of a very simple html form, which would contain only 2 fields (“realname” and “email”). If I use an actual such form in Safari, the cgi works without any problems, and I get an email in my inbox.

However, when I click on my little button in my app, instead of seeing the ‘success’ page in htmlView, I get an error page, generated by the cgi. It states that “An error has occurred in the program: Malformed Multipart POST”. Here is what I’ve tried doing already:

None of it seems to work. It keeps saying that the post is malformed… But I don’t understand what else it is that I’m supposed to be doing to ‘form’ it properly! Any thoughts? I hope this is going to be something really stupid and trivial…

I recommend that you install a network sniffer and see what’s going on at the network level. Ethereal is an excellent sniffer (although it requires X11 on OS X) and it can seamlessly show you an entire session’s traffic. Compare the working upload with the one that doesn’t work, and see what the differences are. This will probably help you a lot.

If you are using a WebKit WebView in your app, then you do not need a sniffer – try this:

set the resource load delegate for your webview to a class that implements something like this:

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// -(NSURLRequest )webView:(WebView *)sender resource:(id)identifier willSendRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request redirectResponse:(NSURLResponse *)redirectResponse fromDataSource:(WebDataSource *)dataSource { if ([request HTTPBody] != NULL) //filter out just the form submissions that have a body { NSLog (@”request: %@\n”, request); NSData theBodyData = [request HTTPBody]; NSString* theBody = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:theBodyData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; NSLog (@”request body: %@\n”, theBody); [theBody release]; } return request; }

Then you can submit the form using your webView and see exactly what it sends so that you can mimic it. –DaveParizek

I got it all working yesterday.!

To get KasPer’s code working: replace all occurrences of “\n” with “\r\n”, and replace “NSASCIIStringEncoding” with “NSUTF8StringEncoding”. It works!

My code, which now works as well - and even uploads a test file - is below. The problems were in the boundaries. It seems that the boundaries are much more fiddly and sensitive than specified in the HTTP POST standards. Here is my working code:

I’m posting this here, as I believe it is a good basis for anyone wanting to write a little class that emulates an html form send/upload. It is easy enough to split the ‘setting up the body’ section into separate methods, and substitute the hard-coded strings for replaceable variables. I hope it helps others in the future!

It should be noted that new in 10.4 is the method setHTTPBodyStream: in the [[NSMutableHTTPURLRequest category of NSMutableURLRequest. One can use this instead of setHTTPBody: to ensure that entire files don’t have to be read into memory before sending them.

I suppose one would do something like this:

[postRequest setHTTPBodyStream:[NSInputStream inputStreamWithFileAtPath:filePath]];

Though how one would combine this with a multi-part MIME header seems a bit more complex.

I am successfully posting several forms following the it works code above. But one glitch. With some forms, I need to leave a text input area blank, like say if there is no addressLine2 for a mailing address. But if I write @”” for the value that doesn’t work, and sending a space does not work. Sending even a single dash character does work. What would the browser send if it is nothing? And would that be referred to as NULL, Nil, or nil? I will try to go get a network sniffer installed, but if anyone can give me some insight into this I would appreciate it. –DaveParizek

It depends on how the server script expects its data. I’m guessing that it doesn’t see foo == “” as equivalent to !defined(foo). So why not just omit foo altogether? Don’t set it to anything.

I tried that. Both not submitting anything (neither name or value) for that particular form field, and also submitting only the name of the field and omitting any value. Safari must be sending some indication somehow that the name exists and value empty. And Safari / WebKit would presumably do that in a consistent way. So the server script would have to deal with how Safari packages it up. So if I could figure out how it is packaged up when someone submits the form manually, then I could hopefully figure out how to do it thru a programatic post. So far I have not been able to get ethereal/wireshark installed, once I solve that maybe I can see what it getting passed?? –DaveParizek

For a quick look at the raw data sent from Safari, you can use tcpdump, which you should already have. Try this: sudo tcpdump -X -s 2048 host myserver.example.com . “2048” displays the first 2K of each packet, because the default packet dump size is quite small. You may need to raise that depending on the size of your data. (If you don’t know sudo, look it up before using this). – PaulCollins

or RushManbert on webkitsdk-dev@lists.apple.com gave me a solution posted above where you can use a WebView to look at what is being posted. thanks to everyone who helped me on this. –DaveParizek

It is odd that i cant get this to work using NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest and not WebView. I have tried many things and cant figure out why Kaspers code doesnt work, even with the the \r\n and UTF8 fix. I would rather not get WebKit involved especially since im not using WebView and hiding the window. – Siavash

I got this to work btw… i was having boundary issues. All good now without WebKit

The key to make KasPer’s code alive is to correct newline characters and create a correct boundary. I’ve done some tracing using HTTPScoop to find differences between KasPer’s code requests and curl’s requests and made it work. By the way I’ve allowed myself to change the way the function determines value’s class, because the original wouldn’t work as expected for me. The code below works quite well, I’ve checked it against a few services. File uploads work like a charm.

+(NSData *)dataForPOSTWithDictionary:(NSDictionary *)aDictionary boundary:(NSString *)aBoundary { NSArray *myDictKeys = [aDictionary allKeys]; NSMutableData *myData = [NSMutableData dataWithCapacity:1]; NSString *myBoundary = [NSString stringWithFormat:@”–%@\r\n”, aBoundary];

for(int i = 0;i < [myDictKeys count];i++) {
    id myValue = [aDictionary valueForKey:[myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i]];
    [myData appendData:[myBoundary dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    //if ([myValue class] == [NSString class]) {
    if ([myValue isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]) {
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"\r\n\r\n", [myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@", myValue] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    } else if(([myValue isKindOfClass:[NSURL class]]) && ([myValue isFileURL])) {
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"; filename=\"%@\"\r\n", [myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i], myValue path] lastPathComponent dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:[NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:[myValue path]]];
    } // eof if()
    [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
} // eof for()
[myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@--\r\n", aBoundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        
return myData; } // eof dataForPOSTWithDictionary:boundary:

Big thanks to KasPer for submitting the original piece. – TomekWojcik

Extended the last version by a few lines to allow passing a NSData object. Comes in handy when you already have a file in loaded, e.g. from the image picker.

+(NSData *)dataForPOSTWithDictionary:(NSDictionary *)aDictionary boundary:(NSString *)aBoundary { NSArray *myDictKeys = [aDictionary allKeys]; NSMutableData *myData = [NSMutableData dataWithCapacity:1]; NSString *myBoundary = [NSString stringWithFormat:@”–%@\r\n”, aBoundary];

for(int i = 0;i < [myDictKeys count];i++) {
    id myValue = [aDictionary valueForKey:[myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i]];
    [myData appendData:[myBoundary dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    //if ([myValue class] == [NSString class]) {
    if ([myValue isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]) {
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"\r\n\r\n", [myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@", myValue] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    } else if(([myValue isKindOfClass:[NSURL class]]) && ([myValue isFileURL])) {
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"; filename=\"%@\"\r\n", [myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i], myValue path] lastPathComponent dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:[NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:[myValue path]]];
    } else if(([myValue isKindOfClass:[NSData class]])) {
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"; filename=\"%@\"\r\n", [myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i], [myDictKeys objectAtIndex:i]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [myData appendData:myValue];
    } // eof if()

    [myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
} // eof for()
[myData appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@--\r\n", aBoundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        
return myData; } // eof dataForPOSTWithDictionary:boundary:

– Bob

How to use TomekWojcik’s solution above for reading the file as stream as the request is being sent? Does NSData do that automatically?

I think that it may read the data from the file into the memory, i.e. to the NSData instance. For a large file that is not what I want. I could test it, but I thought that I had better ask before I do.

Thanks.

– yoichi