How to correctly request a geoserver WFS via POST? - post

Question

I have a geoserver instance, that contains our data. Requesting this via GET works all-right and returns the expected results. But sadly it doesn't works with POST.
To be precise, here is the request for the Capabilities with GET, that returns a valid GetCapabilities-Response:
http://myserver:8080/geoserver/wfs?service=wfs&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities
I test this with wget, so the command looks like that:
wget -O wfs 'http://myserver:8080/geoserver/wfs?service=wfs&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities'
Now I try the Capabilities-request with POST. I create a file with the request (named request) with the following content:
<GetCapabilities
service="WFS"
xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/wfs"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.opengis.net/wfs
http://schemas.opengis.net/wfs/1.1.0/wfs.xsd"/>
This I run against the Geoserver with the following wget:
wget -O wfs --post-file=request 'http://myserver:8080/geoserver/wfs'
But now I get an OWS-Exception:
<ows:ExceptionReport xmlns:ows="http://www.opengis.net/ows/1.1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" version="2.0.0" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.opengis.net/ows/1.1 http://moa:8080/geoserver/schemas/ows/1.1.0/owsAll.xsd">
<ows:Exception exceptionCode="MissingParameterValue" locator="request">
<ows:ExceptionText>Could not determine geoserver request from http request org.geoserver.platform.AdvancedDispatchFilter$AdvancedDispatchHttpRequest#1e5c2cc</ows:ExceptionText>
</ows:Exception>
</ows:ExceptionReport>
This looks like no POST-body has been sent or it was ignored. What do I wrong here?
EDIT: OK, I solved the problem. The problem is Geoserver expects a Content-Type-Header for Posting a XML-File. So correct request looks like the following:
wget -O wfs --header='Content-Type: text/xml' --post-file=request.xml 'http://myserver:8080/geoserver/wfs'
This returns the expected result.

Answer 1

I tried to investigate in your case but I don't have a server, so I used http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/web/
GET test: http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/wfs?service=wfs&version=1.1.0&request=GetCapabilities
I got a full response like you did.
POST test: I used http://www.hurl.it/ because I am on a Windows computer. With the following parameters:
URL: http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/wfs
Parameters: add body > same as yours:
<GetCapabilities
service="WFS"
xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/wfs"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.opengis.net/wfs
http://schemas.opengis.net/wfs/1.1.0/wfs.xsd"/>
And I got the same response as the GET version.
Can you try the same tests with this demo server?
UPDATE
After a few comments chatting, the OP find himself the solution. The POST call was missing the Content-Type-Header information which is mandatory.