Reading a string echoed from PHP into java?

Question

I am trying to use the following code to retrieve a response from a server echoed through PHP. The string compare methods compareTo() and (...).equals(..) do not act properly when this code is executed. I have tried all sorts of options and I'm convinced that in spite of appearing to convert the response to string format, "responseText" does not have the typical string properties. If I have 3 string literal statements, one of which is echoed from findUser.php. How can I read it into java in a way that will allow me to determine the contents of the string as i am trying to do here? I have found a lot of discussion about needing to create BufferedReader object, but I do not understand how to implement that. If someone would please lay out the steps for me, I would be very appreciative.

 try {  
      HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();  
      HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(".../findUser.php");  
      httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));  
      HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);  
      final String responseText =  EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity());  


      if(responseText.compareTo("Not Registered") == 0 || responseText.compareTo("Error") == 0) {  
          Log.i("KYLE","TRUE");
          // DISPLAY ERROR MESSAGE  
          TextView loginError = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.loginErrorMsg);  
          loginError.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
          loginError.setText(responseText); 
      }  
      else {  
          GlobalVars.username = userEmail;  
          Login.this.finish();  
          Intent intent = new Intent(Login.this,Purchase.class);  
          startActivity(intent);
      }  
      catch(Exception e) {Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection"+e.toString());}

}

he has that, in the line loginError.setText(responseText) - would've been nice if he included the output of course... — Spyder
– Spyder, Commented May 11, 2011 at 3:47
@Spyder - Hm, I don't know. He says the compareTo() method doesn't work properly, which I thought meant that the corresponding block of code is never executed. I'd like to see the value logged before the conditionals. — no.good.at.coding
– no.good.at.coding, Commented May 11, 2011 at 4:15

Spyder · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-11 05:02:15Z

1

If your responseText log message looks correct but the comparison methods are returning false, then you likely have a character set issue. There are many cases of what appears to be the same character appearing at different code points of different character sets.

The documentation for EntityUtils.toString() states that when no character set is specified, it tries to analyse the entity or just falls back to ISO-8859-1.

UTF-8 is generally a safe default to use. Try adding this to the top of your PHP script:

<?php 
   header('Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8'); 
?>

EntityUtils should pick that up, if not you can pass "utf-8" to the toString() method to force it to use the same character set.

edited May 11, 2011 at 5:02

answered May 11, 2011 at 3:46

Spyder

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3 Comments

Brandon Englert Over a year ago

When I log the value of responseText, it appears in LogCat to be the same string, so I think it's definitely a character issue. I tried adding that statement to the header and no luck. How do I pass 'utf-8' to toString()? Thanks for the help.

Spyder Over a year ago

Check out the docs (right above the toString(Entity) method you're using). Just add it as a second argument.

Brandon Englert Over a year ago

I still haven't solved this. I am going to post a new message

mDiaz93 · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-12 01:25:46Z

0

Here are a couple more ways to read data from a response.

InputStream inputStream = response.getEntity().getContent();

(Method 1) Read data one line at a time using a buffered reader

    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));

    String readData = "";
    String line = "";

    while((line = br.readLine()) != null){
        readData += line;
    }

(Method 2) Read data one byte at a time, then convert to string

    byte[] buffer = new byte[10000]; //adjust size depending on how much data you are expecting
    int readBytes = inputStream.read(buffer);

    String dataReceived = new String(buffer, 0, readBytes);

edited Jan 12, 2012 at 1:25

answered Jan 12, 2012 at 1:16

mDiaz93

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