Question

I’m trying to upload an image on a remote server. If i download images on my phone from google and upload them e.g http://www.mangauk.com/gallery/albums/album-11/lg/scooby.jpeg it uploads just fine. However if i try to upload images that i have taken with the camera, it does not work. The server just hangs.

(IBAction)uploadImage {
    /*
     turning the image into a NSData object
     getting the image back out of the UIImageView
     setting the quality to 90
    */
    NSData *imageData = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(image.image, 90);
    // setting up the URL to post to
    NSString *urlString = @"http://iphone.zcentric.com/test-upload.php";

    // setting up the request object now
    NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init] autorelease];
    [request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]];
    [request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];

    /*
     add some header info now
     we always need a boundary when we post a file
     also we need to set the content type

     You might want to generate a random boundary.. this is just the same 
     as my output from wireshark on a valid html post
    */
    NSString *boundary = [NSString stringWithString:@"---------------------------14737809831466499882746641449"];
    NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@",boundary];
    [request addValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];

    /*
     now lets create the body of the post
    */
    NSMutableData *body = [NSMutableData data];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"rn--%@rn",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];    
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name="userfile"; filename="ipodfile.jpg"rn"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"Content-Type: application/octet-streamrnrn"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[NSData dataWithData:imageData]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"rn--%@--rn",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    // setting the body of the post to the reqeust
    [request setHTTPBody:body];

    // now lets make the connection to the web
    NSData *returnData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:nil error:nil];
    NSString *returnString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:returnData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

    NSLog(returnString);
}

and php script

$uploaddir = './uploads/';
$file = basename($_FILES['userfile']['name']);
$uploadfile = $uploaddir . $file;

if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'], $uploadfile)) {
        echo "http://iphone.zcentric.com/uploads/{$file}";
}

Answer 1

The problem must be in your php script since the file must be getting sent to it.

You should be defining the name of the file in your php, rather than trusting the original file name.

Otherwise someone could upload a malicious .php file and your script would happily upload it and name it .php and they could take over your server.

You should be doing something like this:

$uploaddir = './uploads/';
$file = $uploaddir . 'filename_chosen_by_you.jpg';

This will likely also solve the jpeg / jpg problem becasue you’re doing the naming.

One other thing- you’re also doing a synchronous request- meaning your app will just wait and freeze while doing the request (which could be a few seconds if its a big file), have a look at doing an asynchronous request. That means it will upload the image in the background and then call a function when finished, so you can tell the user everything’s uploaded OK.