NSData and Uploading Images via POST in iOS

Question

I have been combing through the many many posts about uploading images via POST in iOS. Despite the wealth of information on this topic, I cannot manage to correctly upload JPEG data taken from my iPhone Simulator Photo Library. The data, once on the server, is just a huge string of hexidecimal. Shouldn't NSData just be a byte stream? I don't get whats going on with all the hex, or why this code seems to work for everyone else.

Here is the code in question:

-(void)uploadWithUserLocationString:(NSString*)userLocation{
NSString *urlString = @"http://some.url.com/post";

// set up the form keys and values (revise using 1 NSDictionary at some point - neater than 2 arrays)
NSArray *keys = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"auth",@"text",@"location",nil];
NSArray *vals = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:self.authToken,self.textBox.text,userLocation,nil];

// set up the request object
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init] autorelease];
[request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];

//Add content-type to Header. Need to use a string boundary for data uploading.
NSString *boundary = [NSString stringWithString:@"0xKhTmLbOuNdArY"];
NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@",boundary];
[request addValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];

//create the post body
NSMutableData *body = [NSMutableData data];
[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];

//add (key,value) pairs (no idea why all the \r's and \n's are necessary ... but everyone seems to have them)
for (int i=0; i<[keys count]; i++) {
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"\r\n\r\n",[keys objectAtIndex:i]] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",[vals objectAtIndex:i]] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n--%@\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
}
[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"image\"\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];
[body appendData:[NSData dataWithData:self.imageData]];
[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n--%@--\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];

// set the body of the post to the reqeust
[request setHTTPBody:body];

// make the connection to the web
NSData *returnData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:nil error:nil];
NSString *returnString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:returnData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

NSLog(returnString);
[keys release];
[vals release];
}

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

This code works in my app. If you're not using ARC you'll need to modify the code to release anything alloc'ed.

// create request
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init];                                    
[request setCachePolicy:NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringLocalCacheData];
[request setHTTPShouldHandleCookies:NO];
[request setTimeoutInterval:30];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];

// set Content-Type in HTTP header
NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@", boundary];
[request setValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];

// post body
NSMutableData *body = [NSMutableData data];

// add params (all params are strings)
for (NSString *param in _params) {
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\r\n", boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"\r\n\r\n", param] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@\r\n", [_params objectForKey:param]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
}

// add image data
NSData *imageData = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(imageToPost, 1.0);
if (imageData) {
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\r\n", boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"; filename=\"image.jpg\"\r\n", FileParamConstant] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"Content-Type: image/jpeg\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:imageData];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
}

[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@--\r\n", boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

// setting the body of the post to the reqeust
[request setHTTPBody:body];

// set URL
[request setURL:requestURL];