Question

I am writing an application which will send XML over HTTP to a server, and receive XML as the response. I am able to send XML to the server but not able to receive the response.

This is my client code:

public void sendXMLToServer(){
    System.out.println("sendXMLToServer");
    String strURL = "http://localhost:9080/MockServerMachine/sendXMLPost";
    // Get file to be posted
    String strXMLFilename = "output.xml";
    File input = new File(strXMLFilename);
    // Prepare HTTP post
    System.out.println("junaud url "+ strURL);
    PostMethod post = new PostMethod(strURL);


 // Request content will be retrieved directly
    // from the input stream
    // Per default, the request content needs to be buffered
    // in order to determine its length.
    // Request body buffering can be avoided when
    // content length is explicitly specified
    try {
        post.setRequestHeader("Content-type","application/xml");
        post.setRequestHeader("Accept","application/xml");

        post.setRequestEntity(new InputStreamRequestEntity(
                new FileInputStream(input), input.length()));
        HttpClient httpclient = new HttpClient();
        int result = httpclient.executeMethod(post);
        String xmlResponse = post.getResponseBodyAsString();
        // Display status code
        System.out.println("Response status code jun: " + result);

        // Display response
        System.out.println("Response body: ");
        System.out.println(post.getResponseBodyAsString());
        post.releaseConnection();
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (HttpException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

This is the server side:

protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

    //InputStream in = request.getInputStream();
        //URL xmlUrl = new URL(request.getRequestURL().toString());
    //InputStream in = xmlUrl.openStream();

    response.setContentLength(100);
//      PostMethod po = new PostMethod(request.getRequestURL().toString());
//      System.out.println("kikmk = "+po.getRequestEntity());

    try {
        // read this file into InputStream
        //InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("c:\\file.xml");
        InputStream inputStream = request.getInputStream();
        // write the inputStream to a FileOutputStream
        OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(new File("c:\\junaidAhmedJameel.xml"));

        int read = 0;
        byte[] bytes = new byte[1024];

        while ((read = inputStream.read(bytes)) != -1) {
            System.out.println(new String (bytes));
            System.out.println(read);
            out.write(bytes, 0, read);
        }

        inputStream.close();
        out.flush();
        out.close();

        System.out.println("New file created!");
        } catch (IOException e) {
        System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }

      }

Can anyone help me out here? Any sample client/server example for sending XML over HTTP would be great.

Answer 1

Ah, spotted it. Look here:

OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(new File("c:\\junaidAhmedJameel.xml"));

That’s just going to write to the local disk. You’re not writing any content to the response stream. It’s not clear what you want to write to the response stream, but there’s a conspicuous absence of calls to response.getWriter() or response.getOutputStream().

You’re setting the content length to 100, but not actually sending any content. Note that hard-coding the content-length is almost certainly the wrong thing to do anyway… but it’s definitely the wrong thing to do when you’re not sending any content…