[groovy-user] File upload with HTTPBuilder

[Martin Jones]

Hi,

I'm trying to use Groovy HTTPBuilder to submit a POST request to the
cgi script described here:

http://itol.embl.de/help/batch_help.shtml

And am having a bit of trouble. I've not been able to find a file
upload example, and I'm not very familiar with this kind of thing. How
to I include a file in the post body Map? So far I have a fairly naive
approach:

def treeFile = new File('/home/martin/Desktop/gk/manual.nex.con')

def http = new HTTPBuilder( 'http://itol.embl.de/' )

def postBody = [
treeFile:treeFile,
treeFormat:'nexus',
treeName:'testtree',
]

http.post( path: 'batch_uploader.cgi', body: postBody,
requestContentType: URLENC ) { resp, reader ->

println "response status: ${resp.statusLine}"
System.out << reader // print response stream
}

Any help appreciated.

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[Thom Nichols]

So HTTP file upload is not as straightforward as it may seem.  There's a special RFC for how to encode the POST body as mime-multipart so it's not as easy as URL-encoding key/value pairs.  Here's some background: http://www.vivtek.com/rfc1867.html

More to the point, there are examples of Multipart upload for HttpClient 4 that you should be able to use.  Here's an example:
http://radomirml.com/2009/02/13/file-upload-with-httpcomponents-successor-of-commons-httpclient

In your case, you can construct the MultipartEntity and set it on the request in HTTPBuilder's request config closure like so:

http.request( GET, HTML ) { req ->
  def postBody = new MultipartEntity(...)
  ....
  req.entity = postBody

  response.success = { ... }
}

Please let me know how this works out fr you as I've never tried it.  As this seems like a relatively common task, I'd consider adding built-in support, say, to detect a file in the request parameters (like your example) and use a MultipartEntity automatically.  But on the same token, you're the first person who has asked about it :)  Scratch that, I found someone asked the question last year:
http://groovy.329449.n5.nabble.com/forum/PostLink.jtp?post=347727
They got it working through a similar mechanism; basically by using a custom Entity class.

But I'd bet either of these methods work without too much extra effort.  I'll open a JIRA enhancement to support multipart upload and see if I ever get around to implementing it :)

Either way, let me know how it works out for you.

-Tom

[ysb33r]

Reviving an old thread ...

Was the ability to upload files ever added to v 7.2+ or 8.0-SNAPSHOT?

--
Schalk





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[Schalk Cronj é]

To answer my own question, it works with file uploads. If you pass

requestContentType : BINARY,
body : content.bytes

Where content is a File instance.

--
Schalk W. Cronjé
@ysb33r