Upload an image with AFNetworking 2.0

Jeremy Lightsmith picture Jeremy Lightsmith · Oct 9, 2013 · Viewed 15.9k times · Source

I can't understand why this is so hard. All the tutorials and articles online seem to be talking about the 1.0 api, which is pretty useless.

I've tried a few different ways and get different results. What am I doing wrong?

  1. upload task - this seems to not be using a multipart form, wtf?

    NSMutableURLRequest *request = [self.manager.requestSerializer multipartFormRequestWithMethod:@"POST"
                                                                                      URLString:[[NSURL URLWithString:url relativeToURL:[NSURL URLWithString:ApiBaseUrl]] absoluteString]
                                                                                     parameters:@{}
                                                                      constructingBodyWithBlock:nil];
    
    NSProgress *progress;
    NSURLSessionUploadTask *task = [self.manager uploadTaskWithRequest:request
                                                            fromData:data
                                                            progress:&progress
                                                   completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, id responseObject, NSError *error) {
                                                     if (error) {
                                                       NSLog(@"[error description] = %@", [error description]);
                                                     } else {
                                                       NSLog(@"success!");
                                                     }
                                                   }];
    
    [task resume];
    
  2. post with a block - this seems not to attach anything

    [self.manager POST:url
               parameters:@{}
    constructingBodyWithBlock:^(id <AFMultipartFormData> formData) {
        [formData appendPartWithFileData:data
                                    name:@"post[picture]"
                                fileName:@"picture.jpg"
                                mimeType:@"image/jpeg"];
    }
                  success:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, id response) {
                    NSLog(@"Success");
                  }
                  failure:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, NSError *error) {
                    NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);
                  }];
    
  3. simple post - this seems to almost work...but not

    [self.manager POST:url
            parameters:@{@"post[picture][]":data}
               success:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, id response) {
                 NSLog(@"Success");
               }
               failure:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, NSError *error) {
                 NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);
               }];
    

I would love 1 to work, but I'm not sure why it doesn't.

Answer

Ray Lillywhite picture Ray Lillywhite · Oct 18, 2013

For a properly formed "multipart/form-data" body, you need to use use the body construction block while creating the request. Otherwise the upload task is using the raw data as the body. For example, in your AFHTTPSessionManager subclass:

NSString *urlString = [[NSURL URLWithString:kPhotoUploadPath relativeToURL:self.baseURL] absoluteString];
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [self.requestSerializer multipartFormRequestWithMethod:@"POST" URLString:urlString parameters:params constructingBodyWithBlock:^(id <AFMultipartFormData> formData) {
    [formData appendPartWithFileData:photo.data name:@"photo" fileName:@"photo.jpg" mimeType:@"image/jpeg"];
}];

NSURLSessionUploadTask *task = [self uploadTaskWithStreamedRequest:request progress:progress completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse * __unused response, id responseObject, NSError *error) {
    if (error) {
        if (failure) failure(error);
    } else {
        if (success) success(responseObject);
    }
}];
[task resume];

Or, if you don't need to track upload progress, you can simply use:

[self POST:kPhotoUploadPath parameters:params constructingBodyWithBlock:^(id<AFMultipartFormData> formData) {
    [formData appendPartWithFileData:photo.data name:@"photo" fileName:@"photo.jpg" mimeType:@"image/jpeg"];
} success:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, id responseObject) {
    if (success) success(responseObject);
} failure:^(NSURLSessionDataTask *task, NSError *error) {
    if (failure) failure(error);
}];