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Android: Get XML from URL with HTTPClient

I am trying to get an XML document from URL. I know I should not do this on the UI thread, so I start a new one:
Thread t = new Thread(new GetXML());
t.start();
This starts the inner class GetXML which implements Runnable.
private class GetXML implements Runnable {
#Override
public void run() {
String xmlString = getXmlFromUrl(<URL of the XML as String>);
Document xmlDoc = getDomElement(xmlString);
String textValue = getTextValue(pointWhereItBreaks, xmlDoc, "movie");
}
}
As you can see, this executes a few methods, but the problem is already in the first one getXmlFromUrl:
public String getXmlFromUrl(String xmlUrl) {
String xmlString = null;
try {
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(xmlUrl);
//the following line causes the problem
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
xmlString = EntityUtils.toString(httpEntity);
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return xmlString;
}
I have located the line where it breaks. It doesn't pass the following line:
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
Does anybody can tell me how to fix the code? I am stuck at this problem for days. I am able to get XML documents by a URL when I run a java application from my computer with a similar code. Why does it not work with Android?
Thank you very much!

Sending parameters via POST to php file and reading php file's echo

I am sending NameValuePair parameters to a php file on my server and this php file echoes one of three string values.
I need to write code in Java to send these parameters to the PHP file via POST and also save the php file's echo response to a String.
This is what I have so far:
public String getStringFromUrl(String url, List<NameValuePair> params) throws IOException {
try {
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpEntity httpEntity = null;
HttpResponse httpResponse = null;
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
if (params != null) {
httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params));
}
httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
response = EntityUtils.toString(httpEntity);
String response2 = (String) response;
}
catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return response;
}
I know I have the right lines of code for sending the POST parameters but how do I read the value the php file echoes corresponding to the given POST parameters?

You can read the post response this way:
HttpResponse response = client.execute(post);
System.out.println("Response Code : "
+ response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode());
BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()));
StringBuffer result = new StringBuffer();
String line = "";
See the full example here:
http://www.mkyong.com/java/apache-httpclient-examples/

Using Hebrew on JSON code?

I am using this code to POST and GET data from MySQL database .
However when getting data that is not in English, it is displayed as question marks ?
what changes do I make to enable Hebrew language use ?
public class JSONParser {
static InputStream is = null;
static JSONObject jObj = null;
static String json = "";
public JSONParser() {
}
public JSONObject makeHttpRequest(String url, String method,List<NameValuePair> params) {
try {
if(method == "POST"){
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params));
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
is = httpEntity.getContent();
}else if(method == "GET"){
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
String paramString = URLEncodedUtils.format(params, "utf-8");
url += "?" + paramString;
HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url);
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpGet);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
is = httpEntity.getContent();
}
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
try {
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "iso-8859-1"), 8);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
String line = null;
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
sb.append(line + "\n");
}
is.close();
json = sb.toString();
} catch (Exception e) {
Log.e("Buffer Error", "Error converting result " + e.toString());
}
try {
jObj = new JSONObject(json);
} catch (JSONException e) {
Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString());
}
return jObj;
}
}

Make sure your HTTP response comes out encoded in Unicode (UTF-8 for example), and also your client (the application consuming the service) must be aware that of that encoding to read your response.

Parse Json Arabic text

I can't parse Arabic/Persian text from SQL database. Everything is set to UTF-8. My SQL database text is set to utf8_general_ci. JSON parser is set to UTF-8 too.
Text is shown good in English. But when I use Arabic/Persian text in database, android shows text as ???????.
public class JSONParser {
static InputStream is = null;
static JSONObject jObj = null;
static String json = "";
// constructor
public JSONParser() {
}
// function get json from url
// by making HTTP POST or GET method
public JSONObject makeHttpRequest(String url, String method,
List<NameValuePair> params) {
// Making HTTP request
try {
// check for request method
if(method == "POST"){
// request method is POST
// defaultHttpClient
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params));
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
is = httpEntity.getContent();
}else if(method == "GET"){
// request method is GET
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
String paramString = URLEncodedUtils.format(params, "utf-8");
url += "?" + paramString;
HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url);
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpGet);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
is = httpEntity.getContent();
}
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
try {
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
is, "UTF-8"), 8);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
String line = null;
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
sb.append(line + "\n");
}
is.close();
json = sb.toString();
} catch (Exception e) {
Log.e("Buffer Error", "Error converting result " + e.toString());
}
// try parse the string to a JSON object
try {
jObj = new JSONObject(json);
} catch (JSONException e) {
Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString());
}
// return JSON String
return jObj;
}
}

I have been r & d around a day and finally success to parse my arabic json response getting from server using following code.So, may be helpful to you.
HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
HttpProtocolParams.setVersion(params, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
HttpProtocolParams.setContentCharset(params, "UTF-8");
params.setBooleanParameter("http.protocol.expect-continue", false);
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(params);
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(Your_URL);
HttpResponse http_response= httpclient.execute(httppost);
HttpEntity entity = http_response.getEntity();
String jsonText = EntityUtils.toString(entity, HTTP.UTF_8);
Log.i("Response", jsonText);
Now, use jsonText for your further requirement.
Thank You

Maybe the problem is on server side. Check the raw String you got from the Server to see if it is correctly formatted.

I think it can help you by storing it as clob/blob, since once you have the bytes which were convereted from UTF-8 at server side, any client side code can also then using various String encoding formats to display the test.
Or my other advice, use a webview to display it, its more mature to handle these nuances.

Xml file not received properlly

I am using this code in order to get the rss file from the given url:
// get the xml file from the given url in a string format
public String getXmlFromUrl(String url)
{
String xml = null;
try
{
// defaultHttpClient
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();
xml = EntityUtils.toString(httpEntity);
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
// return XML
return xml;
}
This is the code for getting the xml file text:
String yahoo_url = "http://feeds.finance.yahoo.com/rss/2.0/headline?s=intc&region=US&lang=en-US";
parser = new XMLParser();
String text = parser.getXmlFromUrl(yahoo_url);
System.out.println(text);
Instead of giving me the entire file, I only get two lines:
"?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?
rss version="2.0"><channel/></rss?"
What may be the problem?
Thanks

The problem may be some encoding issue. If your XML string is processed using the wrong charset, it could be that some characters are misinterpreted as e.g. new lines (would explain the line break in your sample) or End-Of-File.
Try telling EntityUtils the charset of the string (probably UTF-8):
xml = EntityUtils.toString(httpEntity, "UTF-8");