Question

I am attempting to write a method/function in objective c to post data to an online php script. All is going well, Its successfully uploads as many files as I provide it with but I cannot figure out to send variables along with these files. I’ve spent hours now looking through this site and I am unable to find an example that posts files as well as variables.

NSURL * postURL = [NSURL URLWithString:serverURL];
NSString * contentBoundary = @"-14737809831466499882746641449";
NSString * contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@", contentBoundary];

// Build Request
NSMutableURLRequest * urlRequest = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:postURL];
[urlRequest setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[urlRequest addValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];

NSMutableData * postBody = [NSMutableData data];

NSMutableString * postString = [NSMutableString stringWithFormat:@""];
for(NSString * key in dataArray) [postString appendString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@=%@&", key, [dataArray objectForKey:key]]];
[postString deleteCharactersInRange:NSMakeRange([postString length] -1, 1)]; // Trim trailing ampersand from string
NSData * postData = [postString dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding allowLossyConversion:NO];

[postBody appendData:[NSData dataWithData:postData]];

if(attachments != nil){
    for(NSString * filePath in attachments){
        NSString * fileName = [filePath lastPathComponent];
        NSData * attachedFile = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:filePath];
        [postBody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n--%@\r\n", contentBoundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [postBody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition:form-data;name=\"userfile[]\"; filename=\"%@\"\r\n", fileName] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [postBody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Type:application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
        [postBody appendData:[NSData dataWithData:attachedFile]];
        [postBody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n--%@--\r\n", contentBoundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    }
}

NSString * postLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", [postBody length]];
[urlRequest setValue:postLength forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Length"];
[urlRequest setHTTPBody:postBody];

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can try appending the variable’s values to the posted data in the following manner :

// text parameter
    [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\r\n", boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

    [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"applicationId\"\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    NSString *parameterValue1=[dict objectForKey:@"applicationId"];
    [postbody appendData:[parameterValue1 dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [postbody appendData:[@"\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

Hope that works for you. Above code is just an example of the parameter sent with the file upload.