HP ALM 11 Upload attachment using PHP and cURL

Question

I need to upload an attachment to a test in HP's ALM 11. To do so, I have created a custom PHP function based in cURL to use the REST API of ALM. This is the code:

public function attachment($project, $domain, $entity, $id, $filename)
{
    $qc = $this->qc_cookie;
    $ckfile = $this->ckfile;
    $eol = "\n\n";
    $mime_boundary=md5(time());

    $file_to_upload = '--'.$mime_boundary. $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="filename"';
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= $filename;
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= '--'.$mime_boundary. $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="description"';
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= 'Test';
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= '--'.$mime_boundary. $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="'.$filename.'"';
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= 'Content-Type: text/plain';
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64' . $eol . $eol;
    $handle = fopen($filename, 'r');
    $file_to_upload .=  fread($handle,filesize($filename));
    $file_to_upload .= $eol;
    $file_to_upload .= '--'.$mime_boundary.'--'. $eol.$eol;
    fclose($handle);

    $header = array("POST /qcbin/rest/domains/".$domain."/projects/".$project."/".$entity.'/'.$id.'/attachments'." HTTP/1.1",
        'Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary='.$mime_boundary,
        //'Content-Length: '.strlen($file_to_upload)
        );
    curl_setopt($qc, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $header);   
    curl_setopt($qc, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $file_to_upload); 
    curl_setopt($qc, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $ckfile);
    curl_setopt($qc, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($qc, CURLOPT_URL, $this->url."/qcbin/rest/domains/".$this->domain."/projects/".$this->project."/".$entity."/".$id.'/attachments');
    return curl_exec($qc);
}

When I send the request to the specified URL, I get the followin error from ALM:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<QCRestException>
    <Id>qccore.general-error</Id>
    <Title>Illegal multi-part arguments. Attachment wasn't created.</Title>
    <StackTrace>java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal multi-part arguments. Attachment wasn't created.&#xD;
at org.hp.qc.web.restapi.attachments.AttachmentsResource.createAttachmentMutliPart(AttachmentsResource.java:141)&#xD;
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor985.invoke(Unknown Source)&#xD;
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)&#xD;
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)&#xD;
...

I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong. I'm following the indicated structure of the POST fields that is in the API reference. Thank you.

Answer 1

I just solved this problem and am very happy. My issue was that I was defining the boundary in the header with dashes just as they're referenced in the body. This was not correct.

Here is a sample (based on the REST API docs) that worked for me:

Headers:

Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=myboundary

Body:

--myboundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="filename"

anna.txt
--myboundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="anna.txt"

banana
--myboundary--

I am still not able to upload binary attachments, but this is a big improvement for me.

Edit - the following powershell code worked for me for uploading any file type:

$contents = gc "my file path"
$body = @"
--boundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="filename"

$name
--boundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="$name"

$contents
--boundary--
"@

$headers = @{"Content-Length" = $body.Length; "Content-Type" = "multipart/form-data; boundary=$boundary"}

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "ALM attachment URI" -Method Post -ContentType "multipart/form-data;boundary=boundary" -WebSession $global:session -Body $body

Edit: Here's my last update - a python function that successfully uploads an attachment via REST API. Note that it's part of a larger library, but hopefully you get the idea:

def upload_attachment(self, entity_type, id, file_name):
        """
        Name
            upload_attachment
        Description
            Uploads an attachment to the supplied entity
        Parameters
            entity_type: the entity type - i.e. 'test-instance', 'run', etc.
            id: the integer id of the entity
            file_name: the name of the file in the local filesystem
        Returns
        """
        print 'Uploading attachment to %s id=%s' % (entity_type, id)
        with open(file_name, 'rb') as file:
            bin_data = file.read()
        qurl = '%s/qcbin/rest/domains/%s/projects/%s/%s/%s/attachments' % \
            (self.url, self.domain, self.project, entity_type, id)
        headers = {'Content-Type' : 'multipart/form-data; boundary=uploadboundary'}
        body = """--uploadboundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="filename"

%s
--uploadboundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="%s"

%s
--uploadboundary--""" % (file_name, file_name, bin_data)

    rsp = self.session.post(qurl, data=body, headers=headers)
    if rsp.status_code != 201:
            raise Exception('Failed to upload %s - code=%s message=%s' % \
            (file_name, rsp.status_code, rsp.text))

I hope someone finds this useful.

Edit: The code was not working since it's part of a larger library. Here is an example of how to post a simple text file named 'hello.txt' with the content 'Hello!!' It was produced with the code from above:

Headers:

'Content-Type': 'multipart/form-data; boundary=uploadboundary'

Body:

--uploadboundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="filename"

hello.txt
--uploadboundary
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="hello.txt"

Hello!!
--uploadboundary--