[BBTeam]

Hi all,

I am working on an app where we have to pass parameters to a web app using HTTP POST in a HTTPS URL in the form of:

example.com/path/app.asmx/Function?Param1=123456&Param2=098765

We are expecting an XML response in the form of
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<string xmlns="example.com/path/">response</string>

I am not sure how to set up a connection to do this and how to make the program extract the string from the response. Any help would be much appreciated.

[hrbuckley]

Putting parameters in the URL is not the HTTP POST protocol, but you just include the parameters in the URL as you have it coded there (with the https:// prefix of course, eg):

HttpConnection http = (HttpConnection)Connector.open("https://example.com/path/app.asmx/Function?Param1=123456&Param2=098765");

 returnCode = http.getResponseCode();
 String returnMessage = http.getResponseMessage();
 InputStream in = http.openInputStream();
                        
 returnContentType = http.getType();
            
 int cl = (int)http.getLength();
 if (cl > 0)
 {
    byte[] buf = new byte[cl];
    in.read(buf);
    returnContent = new String(buf);
 }
 else
 {
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
    int n = 0;
                            
    while ((n = in.read(buf)) > 0)
    {
       sb.append(new String(buf,0,n));
    }
    returnContent = sb.toString();
 }
                        
 in.close();
 http.close();

[zechariahs]

The problem with simply appending the parameters onto the URL is that you're actually making a GET request. Some APIs will reject a GET when they're expecting a POST, others will simply handle it.

Making a POST Request

HttpConnection oCon = (HttpConnection)Connection.open("http://example.com/path/app.asmx/Function");

URLEncodedPostData oPostData = new URLEncodedPostData(URLEncodedPostData.DEFAULT_CHARSET, false);

post.append("param1", "ThisIsTheValueOfParam1");
post.append("param2", "ABC123");

OutputStream strmOut = oCon.openOutputStream();
strmOut.write(oPostData.getBytes());

strmOut.flush();
strmOut.close();

** I typed this out, so there maybe some spelling mistakes

HRBUCKLEY's example is good for getting the return data as a String. You'll then have to write some code to parse the XML. I prefer the SAXParser.

[BBTeam]

hrbuckley, that did the trick, thank you very much.
zechariahs, thanks for the reply.