Upload an image with AFNetworking 2.0

Question

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?

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];

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);
              }];

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.

When you use an NSURLSessionUploadTask in step 1, where are you getting the data from ? I'm doing something similar (though not a multipart POST) by first building the request, and then using the request.HTTPBody as data. — Bart Vandendriessche
have you been able to resolve this issue .. i am having same issue .. i need to send parameters with image too .. tried all three possible ways .. you mentiond .. but no one is working ... no sample is provided by afnetworking too ... — YogiAR
have you resolved it. I have similar question can you help me stackoverflow.com/questions/22180367/… — Matrosov Alexander

Ray Lillywhite Ray Lillywhite · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-18T17:53:15

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);
}];

Upload an image with AFNetworking 2.0

2 Answers