Http Post with XML example

I am trying to a pass an xml file to a web server with http POST. Could someone provide me an example of this please. Below is what I have got so far. It connects to the webserver, but does not issue the correct POST informaton.

=========================================================
import java.net.*;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.io.*;

public class WebserverConnect {

private static String defaultServer
= "http://myipaddress:myport/";

public static void main(String[] args) {

/* if (args.length == 0) {
System.out.println(
"Usage: java FibonacciXMLRPCClient index serverURL");
return;
}

String index = args[0];

String server;
if (args.length <= 1) server = defaultServer;
else server = args[1]; */

String server;
String index = "0";
server = defaultServer;
ArrayList fileList;

try {
URL u = new URL(server);
URLConnection uc = u.openConnection();
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) uc;
connection.setDoOutput(true);
connection.setDoInput(true);
connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
OutputStream out = connection.getOutputStream();
OutputStreamWriter wout = new OutputStreamWriter(out, "UTF-8");

wout.write("<request name=\"ValidateCustomer\" key=\"[eStoreFr]\" password=\"estore\" company=01>");
wout.write("<CustomerNumber>C102</CustomerNumber>");
wout.write("</request>");

wout.flush();
out.close();

InputStream in = connection.getInputStream();
int c;
while ((c = in.read()) != -1) System.out.write(c);
System.out.println();
in.close();
out.close();
connection.disconnect();
}
catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println(e);
e.printStackTrace();
}

} // end main

}

Hi, welcome to the ranch!

What kind of error does the server give you? Any useful messages?

I'm looking at some of our code that does the same thing. We set a few other properties such as accept=text/xml, Content-Type=text/xml and Content-length. We write right to the stream with no StreamWriter and we flush() but don't close() until after we've read the response. Let me know if any of those differences seem important to you.

Hi Stan,

Thanks for the reply. I figured it out myself. I need to use "setRequestProperty" to override the standard MIME headers.

What would be the code to do HTTP Post a string of data without any xml data (i.e. param=value&param=value)?
[ November 16, 2005: Message edited by: Abu Aaminah ]

Hi, welcome to the ranch!

It's not much different. Just write the key value pairs to the connection's output stream:

private void shutDown() throws Exception
{
    postMessage("pagename=logon&event=logon&userid=admin&password=admin");
    postMessage("pagename=wiki&event=shutdown");
}
 
private void postMessage(String message) throws Exception
{
    openConnection();
    sendRequest(message);
    readResponse();
}
 
private void openConnection() throws UnknownHostException, 
                                     MalformedURLException, 
                                     IOException
{
    InetAddress localHost = InetAddress.getLocalHost();
    String address = "http://" + localHost.getHostAddress() + ":" + port;
    connection = new URL(address).openConnection();
    connection.setDoInput(true);
    connection.setDoOutput(true);
    connection.setUseCaches(false);
}
 
private void sendRequest(String message) throws IOException
{
    DataOutputStream writer;
    connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
    writer = new DataOutputStream(connection.getOutputStream());
    writer.writeBytes(message);
    writer.flush();
    writer.close();
}
 
private void readResponse() throws IOException
{
    BufferedReader reader;
    reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreareader(connection.getInputStream()));
    String str;
    while (null != ((str = reader.readLine())))
    {
    }
    reader.close();
}

I'd usually jump on somebody for providing complete answers instead of hints in this forum, but there was so much code already here that a full example seemed to fit right in.