C# – How to upload file to server with HTTP POST multipart/form-data

cmultipartform-dataPHPpostwindows-phone-8

I am developing Windows Phone 8 app. I want to upload SQLite database via PHP web service using HTTP POST request with MIME type multipart/form-data & a string data called "userid=SOME_ID".

I don't want to use 3rd party libs like HttpClient, RestSharp or MyToolkit. I tried the below code but it doesn't upload the file & also doesn't give me any errors. It's working fine in Android, PHP, etc so there's no issue in web service. Below is my given code (for WP8). what's wrong with it?

I've googled and I'm not getting specific for WP8

async void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var file = await Windows.ApplicationModel.Package.Current.InstalledLocation.GetFileAsync(DBNAME);
    //Below line gives me file with 0 bytes, why? Should I use 
    //IsolatedStorageFile instead of StorageFile
    //var file = await ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.GetFileAsync(DBNAME);
    byte[] fileBytes = null;
    using (var stream = await file.OpenReadAsync())
    {
        fileBytes = new byte[stream.Size];
        using (var reader = new DataReader(stream))
        {
            await reader.LoadAsync((uint)stream.Size);
            reader.ReadBytes(fileBytes);
        }
    }

    //var res = await HttpPost(Util.UPLOAD_BACKUP, fileBytes);
    HttpPost(fileBytes);
}

private void HttpPost(byte[] file_bytes)
{
    HttpWebRequest httpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.myserver.com/upload.php");
    httpWebRequest.ContentType = "multipart/form-data";
    httpWebRequest.Method = "POST";
    var asyncResult = httpWebRequest.BeginGetRequestStream((ar) => { GetRequestStreamCallback(ar, file_bytes); }, httpWebRequest);  
}

private void GetRequestStreamCallback(IAsyncResult asynchronousResult, byte[] postData)  
{
    //DON'T KNOW HOW TO PASS "userid=some_user_id"  
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)asynchronousResult.AsyncState;  
    Stream postStream = request.EndGetRequestStream(asynchronousResult);  
    postStream.Write(postData, 0, postData.Length);  
    postStream.Close();  
    var asyncResult = request.BeginGetResponse(new AsyncCallback(GetResponseCallback), request);  
}  

private void GetResponseCallback(IAsyncResult asynchronousResult)  
{  
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)asynchronousResult.AsyncState;  
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.EndGetResponse(asynchronousResult);  
    Stream streamResponse = response.GetResponseStream();  
    StreamReader streamRead = new StreamReader(streamResponse);  
    string responseString = streamRead.ReadToEnd();  
    streamResponse.Close();  
    streamRead.Close();  
    response.Close();  
}

I also tried to solve my problem in Windows 8 but it's also not working.

public async Task Upload(byte[] fileBytes)
{
    using (var client = new HttpClient())
    {
        using (var content = new MultipartFormDataContent("Upload----" + DateTime.Now.ToString(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)))
        {
            content.Add(new StreamContent(new MemoryStream(fileBytes)));
            //Not sure below line is true or not
            content.Add(new StringContent("userid=farhanW8"));
            using (var message = await client.PostAsync("http://www.myserver.com/upload.php", content))
            {
                var input = await message.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
            }
        }
    }
}

Best Answer

Basic implementation using MultipartFormDataContent :-

HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient();
MultipartFormDataContent form = new MultipartFormDataContent();

form.Add(new StringContent(username), "username");
form.Add(new StringContent(useremail), "email");
form.Add(new StringContent(password), "password");            
form.Add(new ByteArrayContent(file_bytes, 0, file_bytes.Length), "profile_pic", "hello1.jpg");
HttpResponseMessage response = await httpClient.PostAsync("PostUrl", form);

response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
httpClient.Dispose();
string sd = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;

Related Solutions

Application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data

TL;DR

Summary; if you have binary (non-alphanumeric) data (or a significantly sized payload) to transmit, use multipart/form-data. Otherwise, use application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

The MIME types you mention are the two Content-Type headers for HTTP POST requests that user-agents (browsers) must support. The purpose of both of those types of requests is to send a list of name/value pairs to the server. Depending on the type and amount of data being transmitted, one of the methods will be more efficient than the other. To understand why, you have to look at what each is doing under the covers.

For application/x-www-form-urlencoded, the body of the HTTP message sent to the server is essentially one giant query string -- name/value pairs are separated by the ampersand (&), and names are separated from values by the equals symbol (=). An example of this would be:

MyVariableOne=ValueOne&MyVariableTwo=ValueTwo

According to the specification:

[Reserved and] non-alphanumeric characters are replaced by `%HH', a percent sign and two hexadecimal digits representing the ASCII code of the character

That means that for each non-alphanumeric byte that exists in one of our values, it's going to take three bytes to represent it. For large binary files, tripling the payload is going to be highly inefficient.

That's where multipart/form-data comes in. With this method of transmitting name/value pairs, each pair is represented as a "part" in a MIME message (as described by other answers). Parts are separated by a particular string boundary (chosen specifically so that this boundary string does not occur in any of the "value" payloads). Each part has its own set of MIME headers like Content-Type, and particularly Content-Disposition, which can give each part its "name." The value piece of each name/value pair is the payload of each part of the MIME message. The MIME spec gives us more options when representing the value payload -- we can choose a more efficient encoding of binary data to save bandwidth (e.g. base 64 or even raw binary).

Why not use multipart/form-data all the time? For short alphanumeric values (like most web forms), the overhead of adding all of the MIME headers is going to significantly outweigh any savings from more efficient binary encoding.

C# – How to make an HTTP POST web request

There are several ways to perform HTTP GET and POST requests:

Method A: HttpClient (Preferred)

Available in: .NET Framework 4.5+, .NET Standard 1.1+, .NET Core 1.0+ .

It is currently the preferred approach, and is asynchronous and high performance. Use the built-in version in most cases, but for very old platforms there is a NuGet package.

using System.Net.Http;

Setup

It is recommended to instantiate one HttpClient for your application's lifetime and share it unless you have a specific reason not to.

private static readonly HttpClient client = new HttpClient();

See HttpClientFactory for a dependency injection solution.

POST

var values = new Dictionary<string, string>
{
    { "thing1", "hello" },
    { "thing2", "world" }
};

var content = new FormUrlEncodedContent(values);

var response = await client.PostAsync("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx", content);

var responseString = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

GET

var responseString = await client.GetStringAsync("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");

Method B: Third-Party Libraries

RestSharp

POST

 var client = new RestClient("http://example.com");
 // client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator(username, password);
 var request = new RestRequest("resource/{id}");
 request.AddParameter("thing1", "Hello");
 request.AddParameter("thing2", "world");
 request.AddHeader("header", "value");
 request.AddFile("file", path);
 var response = client.Post(request);
 var content = response.Content; // Raw content as string
 var response2 = client.Post<Person>(request);
 var name = response2.Data.Name;

Flurl.Http

It is a newer library sporting a fluent API, testing helpers, uses HttpClient under the hood, and is portable. It is available via NuGet.

    using Flurl.Http;

POST

var responseString = await "http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx"
    .PostUrlEncodedAsync(new { thing1 = "hello", thing2 = "world" })
    .ReceiveString();

GET

var responseString = await "http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx"
    .GetStringAsync();

Method C: HttpWebRequest (not recommended for new work)

Available in: .NET Framework 1.1+, .NET Standard 2.0+, .NET Core 1.0+. In .NET Core, it is mostly for compatibility -- it wraps HttpClient, is less performant, and won't get new features.

using System.Net;
using System.Text;  // For class Encoding
using System.IO;    // For StreamReader

POST

var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");

var postData = "thing1=" + Uri.EscapeDataString("hello");
    postData += "&thing2=" + Uri.EscapeDataString("world");
var data = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(postData);

request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.ContentLength = data.Length;

using (var stream = request.GetRequestStream())
{
    stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
}

var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

var responseString = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();

GET

var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");

var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

var responseString = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();

Method D: WebClient (Not recommended for new work)

This is a wrapper around HttpWebRequest. Compare with HttpClient.

Available in: .NET Framework 1.1+, NET Standard 2.0+, .NET Core 2.0+

using System.Net;
using System.Collections.Specialized;

POST

using (var client = new WebClient())
{
    var values = new NameValueCollection();
    values["thing1"] = "hello";
    values["thing2"] = "world";

    var response = client.UploadValues("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx", values);

    var responseString = Encoding.Default.GetString(response);
}

GET

using (var client = new WebClient())
{
    var responseString = client.DownloadString("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data

C# – How to make an HTTP POST web request

Method A: HttpClient (Preferred)

Setup

Method B: Third-Party Libraries

Method C: HttpWebRequest (not recommended for new work)

Method D: WebClient (Not recommended for new work)

Related Topic