NSMutableURLRequest with multiple headers - objective-c

I'm trying to create a synchronous REST request to an API. The API uses HTTP Basic authentication, so in addition to sending an Accept: application/json header, I need to specify the Authorization header as well with my Base64-encoded username and password pair. When I use just one header the request executes just fine (either successfully authenticating me, or specifying my content format), but when I use both headers, it seems to ignore the Authorization line and returns "HTTP Basic access denied" (presumably a 401).
So I can't for the life of me figure out whats wrong. I'm 100% sure my credentials are valid, because executing the request via REST client works just fine. I'm pretty new to Objective-C so I think perhaps there could be some kind of design pattern I'm not following. Is it valid to call setValue:forKey on an NSMutableDictionary multiple times like that? I also tried using setValue:forHTTPHeader on the request object with the same results.
Here's the code:
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://foo.com/api/v1/bar"];
NSMutableURLRequest *request= [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
NSMutableDictionary *headers = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
NSURLResponse *urlResponse;
NSError *error;
[headers setValue:#"application/json" forKey:#"Accept"];
[headers setValue:#"Basic ..." forKey:#"Authorization"];
[request setAllHTTPHeaderFields:headers];
NSData *urlData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request
returningResponse:&urlResponse
error:&error];
NSString *responseString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:urlData
encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSLog(#"%#",responseString);

The answer is to use:
[request addValue:#"Basic ..." forHTTPHeaderField:#"Authorization"];
Which adds another header into the request instance.

Related

Can't send data from objective-c via POST

i'm developing an app for iPhone and I'm stuck in one call, I have to send data via POST, the django web programmer tells me the app has to receive
param_one = request.POST['param_one']
param_two = request.POST['param_two']
but I cannot make it to send any data...
I'm learning objective-c, so please, could you tell me how to do it with an example?
PS: all the other calls that doesn't send any data, or pass data through url (GET method) works fine, so I'm making the connection correctly
Here's the code I'm using:
NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
[dict setObject:#"somename" forKey:#"user"];
NSString *jsonString = [dict JSONRepresentation];
NSData *jsonData = [jsonString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSMutableURLRequest *  request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://web.com/custom/url/call/"]];
[request setValue:jsonString forHTTPHeaderField:#"json"];
[request setHTTPMethod:#"POST"];
[request addValue:csrf forHTTPHeaderField:#"X-CSRFToken"];
[request setHTTPBody:jsonData];
senddata = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];
You should probably add:
[request setValue:#"application/json; charset=UTF-8" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Type"];
Then the server will know that what you're sending is UTF-8 encoded JSON and it will be able to parse it appropriately. Otherwise it just gets a formless blob of data.
Unless it's for debugging purposes, it's very odd that you put the JSON string into both the header and the body.

JSON truncated when sent via NSMutableURLRequest to APS.NET MVC controller

I am building a JSON post in objective-c and sending it to an ASP.NET MVC controller.
I am building the NSMutableURLRequest as follows:
request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:url];
NSString* jsonRequest = [NSString stringWithFormat: #"{\"collection\":\"images\",\"id\":\"%#\",\"objectjson\":%#}",response.id,response.json];
NSData *requestData = [NSData dataWithBytes:[jsonRequest UTF8String] length:[jsonRequest length]];
[request setHTTPMethod:#"POST"];
[request setValue:#"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Accept"];
[request setValue:#"application/json" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Type"];
[request setValue:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%d", [requestData length]] forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Length"];
[request setHTTPBody: requestData];
I then send the request as follows:
NSOperationQueue *backgroundQueue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init];
[NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:request queue:backgroundQueue completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *error)
{ ... completion code goes here
This works well most of the time. However, for very large JSON strings I occasionally get a web service error where the web service reports that it is encountering an End of File marker within the JSON. It appears that the JSON is being truncated.
I am sending the JSON to an ASP.NET MVC controller.
Does anyone have any words of wisdom on what might be happening? Are there any ASP.NET web configuration settings that perhaps I need to adjust to prevent this issue occurring.
One thing I don't understand is why it is such an intermittent problem.
This seems to be a result of bytes being lost over 3G or EDGE connection. The best idea I can come up with is to detect on the server that the content length header is larger than the request POST body and to return a status code that tells the client to try again. The client could pass a retry count on the url and the server could read it and if it's a certain value, the server would return an error code indicating that a retry should not be attempted. Ugly I know but I can't think of a better way. This is what I am going to do for my photo uploading app.
Good luck!
the problem is in the conversion to NSData
try this
NSData *requestData = [jsonRequest dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

NSURLConnection Unable to http post large file

We are trying to add in functionality into our app to allow it to POST a large file approx 50kb to our web service the file itself is a HTML template, however with the code below what we are finding is that the data seems to get cut off when the web service saves it.
The web service is currently designed to check the $_POST['html'] variable and write it to a file.
Is there a better way to do this and does anyone have any idea why the upload is not complete?
Thanks Aaron
NSString *myText;
NSString *filePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"template" ofType:#"htm"];
if (filePath) {
myText = [NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:filePath encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:nil];
}
NSURL *URL = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://mywebsiteurl.com/receiveData.php"];
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:URL];
request.HTTPMethod = #"POST";
NSString *params = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"html=%#", myText];
NSData *data = [params dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
[request addValue:#"8bit" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Transfer-Encoding"];
[request addValue:#"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Type"];
[request addValue:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%i", [data length]] forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Length"];
[NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:[request autorelease] delegate:self];
I think it is because your Server set the post limit.Check the settings at your server side about the post data limit.
When I rechecked this question, I think maybe I found what was the problem. When I do HTTP post, I usually don't set the content-length by myself. I just encode my post data as key=value&.. form and use the [NSMutableURLRequest setHTTPBody:data] method to add the data to the NSMutableURLRequest. I think it will do the rest for you include set the content-length for you. Even though I am not very familiar with HTTP protocol, but I think maybe the content-length represent the whole post data length, but here you set the content-length value with the length of key value data length.

Windows Azure Authentication for Bing Search in Objective-C

On 01.08.12 Bing modified their search api to a Azure, How can I authenticate in Objective-C to use the new bing search api from Azure?
My best guess is to learn from the provided PHP example in the migration word document!! http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=248077 (Oh god, can't you setup a web page!) or this Java Question - Bing Search API Azure Marketplace Authentication in Java
I'm using ASIHTTPRequest to authenticate with following code.
NSString *queryString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"'%#'", queryString];
queryString = [queryString urlEncodeUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; //You'll have to implement url encoding method, preferably in a string category file
NSString *urlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Data.ashx/Bing/Search/v1/Image?Query=%#&Market='en-US'&$top=50&$format=json", queryString];
ASIHTTPRequest *request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString] ];
[request setAuthenticationScheme:(NSString *)kCFHTTPAuthenticationSchemeBasic];
[request setUsername:#"YOUR_KEY_HERE"];
[request setPassword:#"YOUR_KEY_HERE"];
[request setDelegate:self];
[request startAsynchronous];
Please note, no appID required. just instead pass your key as username and password. It is successfully getting the data.
However, can't really convert the data to NSString. tried every encoding but can't get the string from the data. Initial googling says it's UTF-8 encoded. But no success.
For above code to work, you must add ASIHTTP framework.
Another thing is, my guess is passing base64 encoded string with this format your_key:yourkey should also work with basic authentication.
I was able to get it to work using just NSUrlConnection. You must first base64encode
NSString *keyString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#:%#", BING_SEARCH_API_KEY, BING_SEARCH_API_KEY];
NSData *plainTextData = [keyString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSString *base64String = [plainTextData base64EncodedString];
Setup your request
NSMutableURLRequest *req = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init];
[req setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:searchUrl]];
NSString *authValue = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Basic %#", base64String];
[req setValue:authValue forHTTPHeaderField:#"Authorization"];
Make the request
NSError *error = [[NSError alloc] init];
NSHTTPURLResponse *response = nil;
NSData *data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:req returningResponse:&response error:&error];
Look at the documentation about how to form searchUrl, and then process data according to the format you specified in $format= (I used json, so mine looks like):
NSDictionary *json = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:data options:NSJSONReadingMutableContainers error:&error];
I left out error handling, dont forget to add that by checking response as well as error.

Properly handling NSURLConnection errors

I have a simple form interface set up that send username and password information to a server: (working)
NSString *postData = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"user=%#&pass=%#",[self urlEncodeValue:sysUsername],[self urlEncodeValue:password]];
NSLog(#"Post data -> %#", postData);
///
NSData* postVariables = [postData dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding allowLossyConversion:YES];
NSMutableURLRequest* request = [[[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init] autorelease];
NSString* postLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%d", [postVariables length]];
NSURL* postUrl = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://localhost/~csmith/cocoa/test.php"];
[request setURL:postUrl];
[request setHTTPMethod:#"POST"];
[request setValue:postLength forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Length"];
[request setValue:#"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:#"Content-Type"];
[request setHTTPBody: postVariables];
NSData *returnData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:NULL error:NULL];
NSLog(#"Post data SENT & returned -> %#", returnData);
How do I handle connection errors such as no internet connection, firewall, etc.
Also, does this method use the system-wide proxy settings? Many of my users are behind a proxy.
Thanks a lot!
First, you shouldn't use synchronous requests, use asynchronous request instead and indicate activity using indeterminate progress indicators.
When using asynchronous requests, you have to set a delegate implement delegate methods, notably:
-connectionDidFinishLoading:
-connection:didFailWithError:
From the docs:
Unless a NSURLConnection receives a cancel message, the delegate will receive one and only one of connectionDidFinishLoading:, or connection:didFailWithError: message, but never both. In addition, once either of messages are sent, the delegate will receive no further messages for the given NSURLConnection.
As for the last question:
Also, does this method use the system-wide proxy settings?
Yes, NSURLConnection uses them automatically.
You should use asynchronous request to handle proxy and network errors. This is more efficient.
To add extra check you can add reach-ability test in your code before communications. you can find reach-ability test code here