In Java, using HttpPost (apache commons HttpClient) when sending JSON POST - should I URL encode the body?
apache-httpclient-4.x, java, json, rest, url-encoding
Solution
There's sort of two contexts you have to worry about here:
JSON You have to make sure that the JSON you generate is valid JSON (duh). This means making sure that all the `{ }` and `[ ]` syntax is in the right place and making sure that the field values you are inserting into the JSON object are safely escaped (like escaping that HTML snippet in your question --some of the quote characters would need to be escaped). BUT because you're using a standard JSON Java library, you don't have to worry about this...it will take care of all this for you.
HTTP The JSON string then has to be inserted into the HTTP request body. No escaping needs to be done here--just insert the raw JSON string. HTTP, as a protocol, will accept anything inside the request/response bodies, including raw binary data.
Anyway that was kind of long, but I hope it helped.
Problem
I'm sending a RESTful JSON POST request using Apache HttpClient (to a 3rd party API) Should I URL encode the JSON body? And if something in the content is already URL encoded (e.g. I send HTML that has some links with URL encoded chars, e.g. @22) should I expect to get the content as is on the other side without it being decoded? E.g. if i'm doing something like this ``` String html = "<a href='http://example.com?charOfTheDay=%22'>click me</a>"; // Build the JSON object JSONObject jsonObj = new JSONObject(); jsonObj.put("html", html); jsonObj.put("otherKey",otherValue); //... // Create the POST object and add the parameters HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url); StringEntity entity = new StringEntity(jsonObj.toString(), HTTP.UTF_8); entity.setContentType("application/json"); httpPost.setEntity(entity); HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpPost); ``` Should I expect getting the same value on the receiving end, after getting the value of the "html" key? e.g. on the receiving end ``` //after parsing the request string to a JSON object String html = inputJsonObject.get("html") // should return "<a href='http://example.com?charOfTheDay=%22'>click me</a>" ``` Are there any other steps I need to do to make sure what I send is what is received "as is"?