How can I make a multipart/form-data POST request using Java?

Question

In the days of version 3.x of Apache Commons HttpClient, making a multipart/form-data POST request was possible (an example from 2004). Unfortunately this is no longer possi

Answer 1

We have a pure java implementation of multipart-form submit without using any external dependencies or libraries outside jdk. Refer https://github.com/atulsm/https-multipart-purejava/blob/master/src/main/java/com/atul/MultipartPure.java

private static String body = "{\"key1\":\"val1\", \"key2\":\"val2\"}";
private static String subdata1 = "@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@\r\n";
private static String subdata2 = "<data>subdata2</data>";

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{        
    String url = "https://" + ip + ":" + port + "/dataupload";
    String token = "Basic "+ Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString((userName+":"+password).getBytes());

    MultipartBuilder multipart = new MultipartBuilder(url,token);       
    multipart.addFormField("entity", "main", "application/json",body);
    multipart.addFormField("attachment", "subdata1", "application/octet-stream",subdata1);
    multipart.addFormField("attachment", "subdata2", "application/octet-stream",subdata2);        
    List<String> response = multipart.finish();         
    for (String line : response) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }
}

Answer 2

My code for sending files to server using post in multipart. Make use of multivalue map while making request for sending form data

  LinkedMultiValueMap<String, Object> map = new LinkedMultiValueMap<>();
        map.add("FILE", new FileSystemResource(file));
        map.add("APPLICATION_ID", Number);

   httpService.post( map,headers);

At receiver end use

@RequestMapping(value = "fileUpload", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public ApiResponse AreaCsv(@RequestParam("FILE") MultipartFile file,@RequestHeader("clientId") ){
//code
}

Answer 3

We use HttpClient 4.x to make multipart file post.

UPDATE: As of HttpClient 4.3, some classes have been deprecated. Here is the code with new API:

CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClients.createDefault();
HttpPost uploadFile = new HttpPost("...");
MultipartEntityBuilder builder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
builder.addTextBody("field1", "yes", ContentType.TEXT_PLAIN);

// This attaches the file to the POST:
File f = new File("[/path/to/upload]");
builder.addBinaryBody(
    "file",
    new FileInputStream(f),
    ContentType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM,
    f.getName()
);

HttpEntity multipart = builder.build();
uploadFile.setEntity(multipart);
CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(uploadFile);
HttpEntity responseEntity = response.getEntity();

Below is the original snippet of code with deprecated HttpClient 4.0 API:

HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url);

FileBody bin = new FileBody(new File(fileName));
StringBody comment = new StringBody("Filename: " + fileName);

MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
reqEntity.addPart("bin", bin);
reqEntity.addPart("comment", comment);
httppost.setEntity(reqEntity);

HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
HttpEntity resEntity = response.getEntity();

Answer 4

If size of the JARs matters (e.g. in case of applet), one can also directly use httpmime with java.net.HttpURLConnection instead of HttpClient.

httpclient-4.2.4:      423KB
httpmime-4.2.4:         26KB
httpcore-4.2.4:        222KB
commons-codec-1.6:     228KB
commons-logging-1.1.1:  60KB
Sum:                   959KB

httpmime-4.2.4:         26KB
httpcore-4.2.4:        222KB
Sum:                   248KB

Code:

HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
connection.setDoOutput(true);
connection.setRequestMethod("POST");

FileBody fileBody = new FileBody(new File(fileName));
MultipartEntity multipartEntity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.STRICT);
multipartEntity.addPart("file", fileBody);

connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", multipartEntity.getContentType().getValue());
OutputStream out = connection.getOutputStream();
try {
    multipartEntity.writeTo(out);
} finally {
    out.close();
}
int status = connection.getResponseCode();
...

Dependency in pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
    <artifactId>httpmime</artifactId>
    <version>4.2.4</version>
</dependency>

Answer 5

Use this code to upload images or any other files to the server using post in multipart.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;

import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.ResponseHandler;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost;
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.MultipartEntity;
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.content.FileBody;
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.content.StringBody;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.BasicResponseHandler;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;

public class SimplePostRequestTest {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedEncodingException, IOException {
        HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://192.168.0.102/uploadtest/upload_photo");

        try {
            FileBody bin = new FileBody(new File("/home/ubuntu/cd.png"));
            StringBody id = new StringBody("3");
            MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
            reqEntity.addPart("upload_image", bin);
            reqEntity.addPart("id", id);
            reqEntity.addPart("image_title", new StringBody("CoolPic"));

            httppost.setEntity(reqEntity);
            System.out.println("Requesting : " + httppost.getRequestLine());
            ResponseHandler<String> responseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
            String responseBody = httpclient.execute(httppost, responseHandler);
            System.out.println("responseBody : " + responseBody);

        } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {

        } finally {
            httpclient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
        }
    }

}

it requires below files to upload.

libraries are httpclient-4.1.2.jar, httpcore-4.1.2.jar, httpmime-4.1.2.jar, httpclient-cache-4.1.2.jar, commons-codec.jar and commons-logging-1.1.1.jar to be in classpath.