You should be able to use HttpClient in Android to do what you need. I just finished the first part of an integration of Android with an ASP.NET MVC 3 site and I must say - it was quite painless. I use Json as my data exchange format.
You can view exactly what the header looks like by setting a debug point after building your request. Here is some sample code (please remember it is just sample code - not a full implementation).
This class is called by a separate thread than the UI thread:
public class RemoteDBAdapter { public String register(String email, String password) throws Exception { RestClient c = new RestClient("http://myurl/Account/Register"); c.AddHeader("Accept", "application/json"); c.AddHeader("Content-type", "application/json"); c.AddParam("Email", email); c.AddParam("Password", password); c.Execute(RequestMethod.POST); JSONObject key = new JSONObject(c.getResponse()); return key.getString("status"); } }
Use this class to build your request and execute it:
public class RestClient { public enum RequestMethod { GET, POST } private ArrayList <NameValuePair> params; private ArrayList <NameValuePair> headers; private String url; private int responseCode; private String message; private String response; public String getResponse() { return response; } public String getErrorMessage() { return message; } public int getResponseCode() { return responseCode; } public RestClient(String url) { this.url = url; params = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); headers = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); } public void AddParam(String name, String value) { params.add(new BasicNameValuePair(name, value)); } public void AddHeader(String name, String value) { headers.add(new BasicNameValuePair(name, value)); } public void Execute(RequestMethod method) throws Exception { switch(method) { case GET: { //add parameters String combinedParams = ""; if(!params.isEmpty()){ combinedParams += "?"; for(NameValuePair p : params) { String paramString = p.getName() + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(p.getValue(),"UTF-8"); if(combinedParams.length() > 1) { combinedParams += "&" + paramString; } else { combinedParams += paramString; } } } HttpGet request = new HttpGet(url + combinedParams); //add headers for(NameValuePair h : headers) { request.addHeader(h.getName(), h.getValue()); } executeRequest(request, url); break; } case POST: { HttpPost request = new HttpPost(url); //add headers for(NameValuePair h : headers) { request.addHeader(h.getName(), h.getValue()); } JSONObject jo = new JSONObject(); if(!params.isEmpty()){ for (int i = 0; i < params.size();i++) { jo.put(params.get(i).getName(),params.get(i).getValue()); } StringEntity se = new StringEntity(jo.toString()); se.setContentType("text/xml"); se.setContentEncoding( new BasicHeader(HTTP.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/json")); request.setEntity(se); //request.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params, HTTP.UTF_8)); } executeRequest(request, url); break; } } } private void executeRequest(HttpUriRequest request, String url) { //HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpClient client = HttpClientFactory.getThreadSafeClient(); HttpResponse httpResponse; try { httpResponse = client.execute(request); responseCode = httpResponse.getStatusLine().getStatusCode(); message = httpResponse.getStatusLine().getReasonPhrase(); HttpEntity entity = httpResponse.getEntity(); if (entity != null) { InputStream instream = entity.getContent(); response = convertStreamToString(instream); // Closing the input stream will trigger connection release instream.close(); } } catch (ClientProtocolException e) { client.getConnectionManager().shutdown(); e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { client.getConnectionManager().shutdown(); e.printStackTrace(); } } private static String convertStreamToString(InputStream is) { BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is)); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); String line = null; try { while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) { sb.append(line + "\n"); } } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } finally { try { is.close(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } return sb.toString(); } }
EDIT:
Oh ya and the HttpClientFactory:
// Should be thread safe public class HttpClientFactory { private static DefaultHttpClient client; public synchronized static DefaultHttpClient getThreadSafeClient() { if (client != null) return client; client = new DefaultHttpClient(); ClientConnectionManager mgr = client.getConnectionManager(); HttpParams params = client.getParams(); client = new DefaultHttpClient(new ThreadSafeClientConnManager(params, mgr.getSchemeRegistry()), params); return client; } }
