Strange issue while posting image from iPhone

Question

I am facing a very strange issue while uploading an image from iPhone. When I upload image from iPhone,image on server gets created but with 0 size.

I have used many PHP functions to receive image from bytes but all in vain, from iPhone I am sending image an httppost in binary form (multipart content type).

All the code is given below. Following are the various PHP methods that I have used but neither of them is working .

$id=rand() ;  // for image name

//=====================1st method========================   
if(isset($_REQUEST['image_string'])) {      
    $imgData =@$_REQUEST['image_string'];

    header('Content-Type:image/jpg; charset=utf-8');     

    $file = fopen("new_arrivals_img/".$id.".jpg", 'wb');
    fwrite($file, $binary);   
    fclose($file);   
}    

//========================2nd method=====================

if(isset($_REQUEST['image_string'])) {
     $imgData =$_REQUEST['image_string'];
    $im = imagecreatefromstring($imgData);

    $src="new_arrivals_img/".$id.".png";
    imagepng($im,$src);
}


//=======================3rd method==================

if(isset($_REQUEST['image_string'])) {    
    $target_path = "new_arrivals_img/";
    $target_path = $target_path.basename($_FILES['image_string']['name']);  

    move_uploaded_file($_FILES['image_string']['tmp_name'], $target_path);              
}

//===================4th method ===========

if(isset($_REQUEST['image_string'])) {    
    $imageString = file_get_contents($_REQUEST['image_string']);
    $save = file_put_contents("new_arrivals_img/".$id.".png",$_REQUEST['image_string']);   
}   

//==========================5th method =================

if(isset($_REQUEST['image_string'])) {   
    copy($_REQUEST['image_string'], "new_arrivals_img/".$id.".png");   
}   

//======6th method =========================================


if(isset($_REQUEST['image_string'])) {      
    $url = $_REQUEST['image_string'];
    $dir = "new_arrivals_img/";
    $lfile = fopen($dir . basename($url), "w");

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)');
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $lfile);
    curl_exec($ch);
    fclose($lfile);
    curl_close($ch);
}

iOs code is given below:

//image_string3 is parameter in which imagedata1 passed and server url is // http://192.95.48.44/image_binary/index.php



    NSData *imageData1 = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(myImage,0.2);     //change Image to NSData

        if (imageData1 != nil)
        {

            NSString *urlString = @"http://192.95.48.44/image_binary/index.php";

            NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init];
            [request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:urlString]];
            [request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];

            NSString *boundary = [NSString stringWithString:@"---------------------------14737809831466499882746641449"];
            NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@",boundary];
            [request addValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];

            NSMutableData *body = [NSMutableData data];



            [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n--%@\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
            [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"image_string\"; filename=\"test123.jpg\"\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

            [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@"Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
            [body appendData:[NSData dataWithData:imageData1]];
            [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n--%@--\r\n",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
            // setting the body of the post to the reqeust
            [request setHTTPBody:body];

            NSLog(@"body %@",body);
            NSLog(@"request %@",request);
            // now lets make the connection to the web
            NSData *returnData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:nil error:nil];
            NSString *returnString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:returnData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
            NSLog(@"returning strin %@",returnString);
            NSLog(@"finish");

        }

Answer 1

After spending two days on this issue, i finally got the solution, it was issue in my server that was not allowing me to create image dynamically or through programming.

Although i had given full rights (read,write,update or 777) to my folder where i was creating image.

i just changed the server and it worked perfectly, the code i was using and the one provided by AdamG both worked for me.

Answer 2

I think that your function in Objective-C is correct. However, I think the PHP side methods you are using are incorrect. This is the one that I use and it works perfectly:

function uploadPicture(){

    if ($_FILES["file"]["name"] == "noimage.jpg"){
        return "noimage.jpg";
    }

    $uploadLocation = "failed";

    $allowedExts = array("jpg", "jpeg", "gif", "png");

    $extension = end(explode(".", $_FILES["file"]["name"]));
    echo "file size" . ($_FILES["file"]["size"] / 1024) . "KB";

    if (($_FILES["file"]["size"] < 500000) && in_array($extension, $allowedExts)){

        if ($_FILES["file"]["error"] > 0) {
            echo "Return Code: " . $_FILES["file"]["error"] . "<br />";
        } else {
            echo "Upload: " . $_FILES["file"]["name"] . "<br />";
            echo "Type: " . $_FILES["file"]["type"] . "<br />";
            echo "Size: " . ($_FILES["file"]["size"] / 1024) . " Kb<br />";
            echo "Temp file: " . $_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"] . "<br />";

            if (file_exists("upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"])) {
                echo $_FILES["file"]["name"] . " already exists. ";
            } else {
                move_uploaded_file($_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"],
                    "upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]);
                echo "Stored in: " . "upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"];
                $uploadLocation = "upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"];
            }
        }
    } else {
        echo "invalid file";
    }

    return $uploadLocation;
}

For thoroughness I will add the method that I am using on the Objective-C side so you can compare if you find the server side isn't the issue. However, as I said before, I think your method is fine, and the issue is on the server side and I checked through both of our code pretty thoroughly to make sure they were the same.

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init];
[request setCachePolicy:NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringLocalCacheData];
[request setHTTPShouldHandleCookies:NO];
[request setTimeoutInterval:30];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];

NSString * boundary = @"qerklasdfe2309asdf123asdfjkl";

// the file name comes from the user_id as the first character, and a random string 20 characters long as the second
// there is a negligable chance of repititions here
NSString * fileName = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%@%@", params[@"user_id"], [[self class] genRandStringLength:20]];

// set Content-Type in HTTP header
NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@", boundary];
[request setValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"];

// post body
NSMutableData *body = [NSMutableData data];

if (image == nil){
    NSLog(@"empty image");
    fileName = @"noimage";
} 
// add image data

NSData *imageData = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(image, 1.0);

[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\r\n", boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"; filename=\"%@.jpg\"\r\n", @"file", fileName] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
[body appendData:[@"Content-Type: image/jpeg\r\n\r\n" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
[body appendData:imageData];
[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

// add params (all params are strings)
for (NSString *param in params) {
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\r\n", boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"%@\"\r\n\r\n", param] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    [body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@\r\n", params[param]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
}


[body appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@--\r\n", boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

// setting the body of the post to the reqeust
[request setHTTPBody:body];

// set the content-length
NSString *postLength = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", [body length]];
[request setValue:postLength forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Length"];

// set URL
NSURL * requestURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.mywebsite.com/myscript.php"];
[request setURL:requestURL];
;

NSURLConnection * theConnection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self startImmediately:YES];
NSLog(@"%@", theConnection);