How to use Alamofire to send bytes? - ios

Question

I'm creating an application to download my university timetable. I've done the REST calls in Java first to demonstrate a prototype which works nicely. And now I'd like to do it in Swift using Alamofire (or anything else which works).
Below is the REST call in Java that I'm trying to replicate.
Client client = Client.create();
String authString = "UID=XXXXX&PASS=XXXXX";
byte[] authBytes = authString.getBytes();
WebResource webResouce = client.resource("https://access.adelaide.edu.au/sa/login.asp");
ClientResponse response = webResource.post(ClientResponse.class, authBytes);
if (response.getStatus != 302) {
throw new RuntimeException("Failed: HTTP code: " + response.getStatus());
}
However I'm having trouble sending the bytes properly. The server will actually accept any byte data (so you can see if it works without a UID or PASS) and respond with 302, which indicates that it works. Otherwise it'll send a 200 which means it didn't.
I've had a few attempts of sending the UID and PASS in a parameter, getting their bytes and then putting them in a parameter etc etc. but nothing seems to work so far.
Any help would be great, thanks!

Answer 1

You should use Alamofire's custom encoding technique (something like this). This is my 3rd hour of Swift so bear with me.
struct ByteEncoding: ParameterEncoding {
private let data: Data
init(data: Data) {
self.data = data
}
func encode(_ urlRequest: URLRequestConvertible, with parameters: Parameters?) throws -> URLRequest {
var urlRequest = try urlRequest.asURLRequest()
urlRequest.httpBody = data
return urlRequest
}
}
Alamofire.request(url: "url", method: .post, parameters: nil, encoding: ByteEncoding(data: authBytesAsData)
Documentation
https://github.com/Alamofire/Alamofire#custom-encoding

Answer 2

If you use a regular NSURLRequest you can just set the request body:
let URL = NSURL(string: "https://access.adelaide.edu.au/sa/login.asp")!
let request = NSMutableURLRequest(URL: URL)
request.HTTPBody = // NSData you want as your body
Edit
As pointed out by #mattt himself, you can pass an NSURLRequest to Alamofire. No need for the hassle with custom parameter encoding as I answered first. (See below)
I don't exactly know how to do this using Alamofire, but it seems you can use a Custom parameter encoding with a closure. I didn't test this but took it from the Alamofire unit test source:
let encodingClosure: (URLRequestConvertible, [String: AnyObject]?) -> (NSURLRequest, NSError?) = { (URLRequest, parameters) in
let mutableURLRequest = URLRequest.URLRequest.mutableCopy() as NSMutableURLRequest
mutableURLRequest.HTTPBody = parameters["data"]
return (mutableURLRequest, nil)
}
let encoding: ParameterEncoding = .Custom(encodingClosure)
let URL = NSURL(string: "https://access.adelaide.edu.au/sa/login.asp")!
let URLRequest = NSURLRequest(URL: URL)
let data: NSData = // NSData you want as your body
let parameters: [String: AnyObject] = ["data": data]
let URLRequestWithBody = encoding.encode(URLRequest, parameters: parameters).0

Answer 3

Here's a quick example of how you could make this type of request.
import Alamofire
class BytesUploader {
func uploadBytes() {
let URLRequest: NSURLRequest = {
let URL = NSURL(string: "https://access.adelaide.edu.au/sa/login.asp")!
let mutableURLRequest = NSMutableURLRequest(URL: URL)
mutableURLRequest.HTTPMethod = "POST"
let authString = "UID=XXXXX&PASS=XXXXX"
let authData = authString.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding, allowLossyConversion: false)!
mutableURLRequest.HTTPBody = authData
return mutableURLRequest.copy() as NSURLRequest
}()
let request = Alamofire.request(URLRequest)
request.response { request, response, data, error in
if let response = response {
println("Response status code: \(response.statusCode)")
if response.statusCode == 302 {
println("Request was successful")
} else {
println("Request was NOT successful")
}
} else {
println("Error: \(error)")
}
}
}
}
You need to encode your authorization string as an NSData object and then set that as the HTTPBody of the NSURLRequest. This should match your Java code that you posted.