Question

Seemingly simple question, but no obvious answer found online.

At this link, there is a tutorial on posting simple name value pairs to a file from within an android app. http://www.androidsnippets.com/executing-a-http-post-request-with-httpclient

What I want to do is post ‘something’ which on the receiving end (a php script) can be accessed as an array.

In PHP I want to receive:

$_POST[‘array’]=array(“key”=>”value”,”key2″=>”value2″);

Being relatively new to android development, perhaps someone could elaborate on creating a similar thing in Java, and then how one cant send it – setEntity seems to only take namevaluepairs…

Many Thanks

Answer 1

You should use a JSON Wrapper both in Android App and your PHP server.

In PHP you should use json_decode(), like: $thingFromPost = json_decode($data).

In Java, there are many ways to create a JSONArray. A basic example would be:

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
list.add("foo");
list.add("bar");
JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(list);

And after that, you just send your array with a HttpPost to your server.

StringEntity stringEntity = new StringEntity(jsonArray.toString());
stringEntity.setContentEncoding(new BasicHeader(HTTP.CONTENT_ENCODING, "UTF-8"));
stringEntity.setContentType(new BasicHeader(HTTP.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/json"));

HttpPost post = new HttpPost(url);          
post.setEntity(stringEntity);
post.setHeader(new BasicHeader(HTTP.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/json"));

If you need a detailed tutorial how to make requests using JSON in Android, follow this link.

Hope it helps!