Question

I am looking to create a RESTful API for use with an Android and iOS app. So far I have been experimenting with using Jersey on the server and then the appropriate http libraries on the client side. At the moment I have been using multipart/related as the mimetype for the request with JSON forming the first part of the body then a jpeg image as the second.

So far I have had problems with making the request to the server, getting a 406 Not Acceptable from Jersey. I note that multipart/related is primarily used in sending emails. Is there actually a way that I can support mixed type content as an upload or have I entirely mis-understood the usage of multipart/related in this context?

Answer 1

You may want to look at this blog, for more information, but here is the important part to help you along:

http://www.mkyong.com/webservices/jax-rs/file-upload-example-in-jersey/

@POST
@Path("/upload")
@Consumes(MediaType.MULTIPART_FORM_DATA)
public Response uploadFile(
    @FormDataParam("file") InputStream uploadedInputStream,
    @FormDataParam("file") FormDataContentDisposition fileDetail) {

    String uploadedFileLocation = "d://uploaded/" + fileDetail.getFileName();

    // save it
    writeToFile(uploadedInputStream, uploadedFileLocation);

    String output = "File uploaded to : " + uploadedFileLocation;

    return Response.status(200).entity(output).build();
}

I expect you want multipart/form-data instead, as this is part of the description of multipart/related:

The Multipart/Related media type is intended for compound objects
consisting of several inter-related body parts. For a
Multipart/Related object, proper display cannot be achieved by
individually displaying the constituent body parts. The content-type
of the Multipart/Related object is specified by the type parameter.
The "start" parameter, if given, points, via a content-ID, to the
body part that contains the object root. The default root is the
first body part within the Multipart/Related body.

For more on this mime type you can look at

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2387