Question

I need to work with REST api in android application which is created by my client. Below text is just copied from the pdf the client provides us.

—
In this example, a new user is created.
The parts of a possible request to the server is shown below:

Message part Contents

Header POST {url-prefix}/rest/user
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Length: 205
Body <request>
  <client>
    <id>XY</id>
    <name>myName</name>
    <password>myPassword</password>
  </client>
  <user>
    <name>myUserName</name>
    <password>myUserPassword</password>
    <groupId>12345</groupId>
  </user>
</request>

—
After searching and studying, I come to know that, the possible request code (in Java) might be:

URL url=new URL("http://api.example.com/rest/user/?name=myUserName&password=myUserPassword&groupId=12345");
            HttpURLConnection conn=(HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            conn.setDoOutput(true);
            conn.setRequestMethod("Post");
            OutputStreamWriter out=new OutputStreamWriter(conn.getOutputStream());
            out.write("respose content:");
            out.close();

From the pdf manual they provide, I got to know, for every request to the server, the client (thats me) has to transmit the authentication data.
My question is, where do I put the authentication data in the query string? Please help me on this.

Edit:After posting the below code as request:

            DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("http://api.example.com/rest/user/?name=Foysal&password=123456&groupid=12345");
            httpPost.addHeader("Accept", "text/xml");
            httpPost.setHeader("Content-Type","application/xml;charset=UTF-8");
            List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("name", "APIappDevAccount"));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("password", "123456"));           
            httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));
            HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
            HttpConnectionParams.setStaleCheckingEnabled(params, false);
            HttpConnectionParams.setConnectionTimeout(params, 5000);
            HttpConnectionParams.setSoTimeout(params, 5000);
            httpClient.setParams(params);
            httpClient.getParams().setParameter(ClientPNames.COOKIE_POLICY, CookiePolicy.RFC_2109);
            HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
            InputStream is = response.getEntity().getContent();
            ByteArrayOutputStream os = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            byte[] buf;
            int ByteRead;
            buf = new byte[1024];
            String xmldata = null;
            double totalSize = 0;
            while ((ByteRead = is.read(buf, 0, buf.length)) != -1) {
                os.write(buf, 0, ByteRead);
                totalSize += ByteRead;                      
            }
            xmldata =  os.toString();
            os.close();
            is.close();

But I got the response as:

404
Not Found

Not Found

The requested
URL /rest/user/ was not found on this
server.

---

Apache/2.2.6
(Fedora) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.6
OpenSSL/0.9.8b Server at
api.example.com Port 80

Answer 1

Looks to me like they want you to POST an XML document and put the authentication in that. Not much of a REST API (most REST APIS don’t require an XML document).

You need to use conn.getOutputStream() to send that doc to the server and use conn.getInputStream() to read the response.

So you would have to create the XML doc like the one they show:

<request>
  <client>
    <id>XY</id>
    <name>myName</name>
    <password>myPassword</password>
  </client>
  <user>
    <name>myUserName</name>
    <password>myUserPassword</password>
    <groupId>12345</groupId>
  </user>
</request>

And then send it in your POST:

conn.setRequestProperty ( "Content-Type", "text/xml" );
out.write(requestDoc); //where requestDoc is the String containing the XML.
out.flush();
out.close();