Question

I am setting up a request to my server, I have been helped out with a few suggestions but I am wanting some clarification on a part of code.

in the second line of code, what are the setValue: and forHTTPHeaderField: values used for? I’m thinking forHTTPHeaderField: sets the mime type… but im not sure what setValue is for or how it effects my request.

[request setHTTPMethod: @"POST"];
[request setValue:@"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:@"content-type"];
[request setHTTPBody:postBodyData];

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

See the NSMutableURLRequest reference for the method description and HTTP documentation at 14.17 Content-Type section for the header information.

More C-T details at the section 7.2.1

Content-Type specifies the media type of the underlying data. Content-Encoding may be used to indicate any additional content codings applied to the data, usually for the purpose of data compression, that are a property of the requested resource. There is no default encoding.

Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If
and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the
recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its
content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the
resource. If the media type remains unknown, the recipient SHOULD
treat it as type “application/octet-stream”.