From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2008-10-24T23:45:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Errors while file uploading thr 'net/http' or 'rest-open-uri' client

> http://www.realityforge.org/articles/2006/03/02/upload-a-file-via-post-with-net-http

That's the document I was going to point you at. It Works For Me [TM], 
for an application which expects to get a multipart/form-data POST.

Now, what you are doing seems very strange; you appear to be 
form-encoding the Content-Type and Content-Transfer-Encoding headers and 
sending them in the body instead of sending them as HTTP headers.

Furthermore, the place you are posting to is 
http://something/file/uploads.xml which looks like you should be sending 
an XML document instead of form-encoded data anyway. And you are 
creating a MIME boundary string too, even though you're not sending it!

You should be aware that there are at least three completely different 
ways of uploading data via a POST:

(1) Raw content in the body, such as an image or an XML document

(2) application/x-www-form-encoded, where the body consists of
name1=value1&name2=value2&...

(3) multipart/form-data, where the body consists of multiple MIME 
sections, one for each parameter in the form [this is the usual case for 
uploads of "attachments" through a web browser]

If you try to use the wrong way of uploading the data, or worse try to 
mix all three together as you appear to be doing, it will be meaningless 
to the server.

Since there are so many variables and possible things to go wrong, you 
first need to work out what on earth it is you're trying to do in the 
first place. You need to work from something concrete, such as:

(a) the actual server-side code which receives the data; or
(b) a HTML form which successfully uploads the required data via a 
browser; or
(c) a tcpdump of a successful upload from some other client; or
(d) a hard-and-fast accurate technical specification for the format the 
server is expecting to receive.

Then at least it should be possible to work out which of formats (1), 
(2) or (3) you need to send, and then you can google for some working 
code which does that.

Brian.
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