Upload via API leads to missing plus signs in HTTP-Body

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi!

I'm developing a Rails-app that needs to take images from a separate program. I managed to upload base64 encoded images via HTTP-Post- Request (Cocoa), the HTTP-Body looks like (base64-data is shortened) this:

"filename=Pic1.jpg&content_type=image/jpeg&data=/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQECeUJ +woRAD/4gxYSU"

When I access the data via params[:data] in my controller, all the plus signs are gone and substituted with spaces. I checked the outgoing data of the separate program with a sniffer and it contains the plus signs, so the substitution must take place somewhere on the server.

Does anybody have an idea what causes this behaviour?

Thanks, Thomas

2

The standards dictate that with application/x-www-form-urlencoded data (the default; Forms in HTML documents) spaces are encoded by + signs, so the server is doing the correct thing by turning them into spaces.

Fred

3

Thank you very much, I was completely unaware of that. So it would be a better idea to imitate a form upload and set the Content-Type to multipart/form-data? Or is there any other way?

4

Thank you very much, I was completely unaware of that. So it would be a better idea to imitate a form upload and set the Content-Type to multipart/form-data?

Certainly an option

Or is there any other way?

You could replace + signs with what ever the correct % escape sequence
is, but the multipart/form-data route is probably simpler.

Fred

5

OK, I understand.

Thanks for your help!

6

TKAB wrote:

OK, I understand.

Thanks for your help!

This might help. See the section on an alternative base64 that is safe for URL encoding.