Android HTTPGet to Rails REST Login

Question

I have a login that needs an email and password.

If I hit it from Postman rest client with this:

www.site.com/login.json?session[email]=bob@gmail.com&session[password]=password

The server (Rails) will read it just fine, like this:

{"session"=>{"email"=>"bob@gmail.com", "password"=>"password"}, "action"=>"create", "controller"=>"sessions", "format"=>"json"}

But, if I send in the same thing with HTTPGet from android, like this:

            HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();

            //get the parameters
            String email = params[0];
            String password = params[1];

            String url = "http://www.site.com/login.json?session[email]=" + email + "?session[password]=" + password;

            HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(url);

            httpget.setHeader("Accept", "application/json");
            httpget.setHeader("Content-type", "application/json");
response = httpclient.execute(httpget);

The server doesn't recognize the parameters, and I end up with an empty json object like this:

{"session"=>{}, "action"=>"create", "controller"=>"sessions", "format"=>"json"}

Anybody know how to form the parameters in this HTTPGet call in android to work like it will in a the rest client call? Thanks!

Does this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6442791/send-http-get-request-with-header may help? — S.Magnaschi, Sep 04 '13 at 09:27
I have no experience with ruby, but have you tried encoding the email? — Rhand, Sep 04 '13 at 09:41
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17938420/how-to-use-httpget-in-my-app/17938774#17938774 try this — Gangadhar Nimballi, Sep 12 '13 at 15:37

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 08 '13 at 10:48

It seems you have a typo in URL and params get messed up. This line:

String url = "http://www.site.com/login.json?session[email]=" + email + "?session[password]=" + password;

should be

String url = "http://www.site.com/login.json?session[email]=" + email + "&session[password]=" + password;

Note that I've replaced ?session[password]= with &session[password]=.

Tim Spann · Answer 2 · 2013-09-14T12:11:44.560

0

Do you need to send USER-AGENT or other HTTP headers for it to be valid? Did you trace the HTTP connection with Fiddler2 or another HTTP trace? That ? instead of a & is probably it though.

For a type-safe REST client for Android try: http://square.github.io/retrofit/ It works very nice and you don't have to worry about manual parsing.

edited Sep 14 '13 at 12:11

answered Sep 14 '13 at 12:02

Tim Spann

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2
6

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 14 '13 at 15:20

One thought I have is that you could try encoding the query string of your URL.

String query = URLEncoder.encode("session[email]=" + email + "?session[password]=" +                 password", "UTF-8");
String url = "http://www.site.com/login.json?" + query;
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(url);
....

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 14 '13 at 14:49

* Replace the ?session in the URL with &session as its a mistake..

If the issue still persists, then try using a POST request as:
- in the first place exposing the email and password that way isn't safe practice
- and POST variables can be easily be handled in Rails controllers using the params tag eg. params[:tag] where tag is the key in the Json object.

Android HTTPGet to Rails REST Login

4 Answers4