web services - How to implement Login with HttpURLConnection and PHP server in Android

Question

I have a Web Service which has login functionality, connecting to a PHP back end:

Htp://hfbhgvbbnvhn.com/mypictures/loginService.php (its in fact http)

I have to send two parameters to it and in return I would get the JSONObject. But right now I am trying to use the HttpUrlConnection object to connect to the PHP service, but I have no idea to how to send the parameters. I have searched many solutions but they all are working on NameValuePair with DefaultHttpClient where as I think I have to send two separate strings as a parameters. So How can I convert this code to an implementation that uses HttpURLConnection instead of DefaultHttpClient, now that DefaultHttpClient is deprecated in Api 22?

Answer 1

The key to using POST with HttpURLConnection is to write the POST parameters to an output stream:

wr = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
wr.writeBytes(paramsString);

Here is a full working example of how you could implement the login functionality with HttpURLConnection.

First, the JSONParser class, which makes the network request and returns a JSON response:

import android.util.Log;
import org.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;
import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.DataOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLEncoder;
import java.util.HashMap;

public class JSONParser {

    String charset = "UTF-8";
    HttpURLConnection conn;
    DataOutputStream wr;
    StringBuilder result;
    URL urlObj;
    JSONObject jObj = null;
    StringBuilder sbParams;
    String paramsString;

    public JSONObject makeHttpRequest(String url, String method,
                                      HashMap<String, String> params) {

        sbParams = new StringBuilder();
        int i = 0;
        for (String key : params.keySet()) {
            try {
                if (i != 0){
                    sbParams.append("&");
                }
                sbParams.append(key).append("=")
                        .append(URLEncoder.encode(params.get(key), charset));

            } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            i++;
        }

        if (method.equals("POST")) {
            // request method is POST
            try {
                urlObj = new URL(url);

                conn = (HttpURLConnection) urlObj.openConnection();

                conn.setDoOutput(true);

                conn.setRequestMethod("POST");

                conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", charset);

                conn.setReadTimeout(10000);
                conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);

                conn.connect();

                paramsString = sbParams.toString();

                wr = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
                wr.writeBytes(paramsString);
                wr.flush();
                wr.close();

            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        else if(method.equals("GET")){
            // request method is GET

            if (sbParams.length() != 0) {
                url += "?" + sbParams.toString();
            }

            try {
                urlObj = new URL(url);

                conn = (HttpURLConnection) urlObj.openConnection();

                conn.setDoOutput(false);

                conn.setRequestMethod("GET");

                conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", charset);

                conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);

                conn.connect();

            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

        }

        try {
            //Receive the response from the server
            InputStream in = new BufferedInputStream(conn.getInputStream());
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
            result = new StringBuilder();
            String line;
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                result.append(line);
            }

            Log.d("JSON Parser", "result: " + result.toString());

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        conn.disconnect();

        // try parse the string to a JSON object
        try {
            jObj = new JSONObject(result.toString());
        } catch (JSONException e) {
            Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString());
        }

        // return JSON Object
        return jObj;
    }
}

Here is an example of how you would initiate the login from an AsyncTask in your Activity:

class PostAsync extends AsyncTask<String, String, JSONObject> {
    JSONParser jsonParser = new JSONParser();

    private ProgressDialog pDialog;

    private static final String LOGIN_URL = "http://www.example.com/testPost.php";

    private static final String TAG_SUCCESS = "success";
    private static final String TAG_MESSAGE = "message";


    @Override
    protected void onPreExecute() {
        pDialog = new ProgressDialog(MainActivity.this);
        pDialog.setMessage("Attempting login...");
        pDialog.setIndeterminate(false);
        pDialog.setCancelable(true);
        pDialog.show();
    }

    @Override
    protected JSONObject doInBackground(String... args) {

        try {

            HashMap<String, String> params = new HashMap<>();
            params.put("name", args[0]);
            params.put("password", args[1]);

            Log.d("request", "starting");

            JSONObject json = jsonParser.makeHttpRequest(
                    LOGIN_URL, "POST", params);

            if (json != null) {
                Log.d("JSON result", json.toString());

                return json;
            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return null;
    }

    protected void onPostExecute(JSONObject json) {

        int success = 0;
        String message = "";

        if (pDialog != null && pDialog.isShowing()) {
            pDialog.dismiss();
        }

        if (json != null) {
            Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, json.toString(),
                    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

            try {
                success = json.getInt(TAG_SUCCESS);
                message = json.getString(TAG_MESSAGE);
            } catch (JSONException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        if (success == 1) {
            Log.d("Success!", message);
        }else{
            Log.d("Failure", message);
        }
    }

}

When you want to login the user, execute the AsyncTask, and pass in the username and password:

    String username = "testuser"; //get this from user input
    String password = "testpass"; //get this from user input
    new PostAsync().execute(username, password);