Android, PHP e Httpurlconnection - Send a message to PHP with UTF-8

Question

Gentlemen, good morning/afternoon/evening!

I’m having trouble accentuating words. The back-end of my system works in PHP chatting with an Android app. When I send the App message to the PHP server it works normally, and PHP responds as expected, but if the message sent to PHP includes accented characters the App shows error and to.

I have already researched of course, but most people are using Httpclient and I am using Httpurlconnection.

I already tried to include a line saying that Requestproperty is UTF-8, but it did not help.

Follows Connection class I’m using.

package Conexao;

import android.util.Log;

import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONObject;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.DataOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

/**
 * Created by billy on 21/05/2016.
 */
public class Conexao {

    private static Conexao instancia;
    public static String urlString;

    private Conexao() {
        //nothing
    }

    public static Conexao getInstancia() {
        if (instancia == null) {
            instancia = new Conexao();
        }
        return instancia;
    }

    public static JSONArray executePost(JSONObject json) {

        JSONArray jsonArray = null;

        try {
            URL url = new URL(urlString);

            HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            conn.setRequestMethod("POST");

            conn.setRequestProperty("contentType", "application/json");

            conn.connect();

            conn.setConnectTimeout(1000);

            DataOutputStream wr = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());

            wr.writeBytes(json.toString());

            InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();
            BufferedReader streamReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8"));
            StringBuilder responseStrBuilder = new StringBuilder();

            String inputStr;
            while ((inputStr = streamReader.readLine()) != null)
                responseStrBuilder.append(inputStr);

            jsonArray = new JSONArray(responseStrBuilder.toString());

        } catch (Exception e) {
            Log.e("Erro ", e.toString());
        }

        Log.i("Resposta: ", jsonArray.toString());

        return jsonArray;
    }

}

From now on, thank you.

Gentlemen, as requested, follow the logcat:

09-22 20:01:39.959 25838-25838/? E/Zygote: v2
09-22 20:01:39.969 25838-25838/? E/SELinux: [DEBUG] get_category: variable seinfo: default sensitivity: NULL, cateogry: NULL
09-22 20:02:06.999 25838-26110/br.com.infogruposi.sct E/Erro: org.json.JSONException: Value Nenhum of type java.lang.String cannot be converted to JSONArray
09-22 20:02:07.019 25838-26110/br.com.infogruposi.sct E/AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: AsyncTask #4
                                                                        Process: br.com.infogruposi.sct, PID: 25838
                                                                        java.lang.RuntimeException: An error occured while executing doInBackground()
                                                                            at android.os.AsyncTask$3.done(AsyncTask.java:300)
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.finishCompletion(FutureTask.java:355)
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.setException(FutureTask.java:222)
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:242)
                                                                            at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:231)
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1112)
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:587)
                                                                            at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:818)
                                                                         Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'java.lang.String org.json.JSONArray.toString()' on a null object reference
                                                                            at Conexao.Conexao.executePost(Conexao.java:68)
                                                                            at br.com.infogruposi.sct.ActAbreChamadoUsu$JSONTransmitter.doInBackground(ActAbreChamadoUsu.java:47)
                                                                            at br.com.infogruposi.sct.ActAbreChamadoUsu$JSONTransmitter.doInBackground(ActAbreChamadoUsu.java:42)
                                                                            at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:288)
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:237)
                                                                            at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:231) 
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1112) 
                                                                            at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:587) 
                                                                            at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:818) 

Gentlemen, I’m doing tests and the following excerpt I removed from my debug:

json = {JSONObject@18906} "{"cha_gru_codigo":"1","cha_pes_usuario":"3","cha_solicitacao":"zé","cha_des_texto":"zinho","classe":"chamado","acao":"usuAbrirChamado"}"
jsonArray = null
url = {URL@18958} "http://www.solusinformatica.890m.com/SCT/SCT/facade/Facade.php"
conn = {HttpURLConnectionImpl@18961} "com.android.okhttp.internal.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl:http://www.solusinformatica.890m.com/SCT/SCT/facade/Facade.php"
wr = {DataOutputStream@18978} 
is = {RealBufferedSource$1@18992} "buffer(com.android.okio.GzipSource@2be6139).inputStream()"
streamReader = {BufferedReader@18997} 
responseStrBuilder = {StringBuilder@19002} ""
inputStr = {String@19007} "Nenhum comando selecionado - <pre>null</pre>"

This last inputStr field is the variable that received the response from Backend and the field between the pre tags, with null value is what the backend received from the Android App, IE, when the message has accent the backend does not receive the data, I believe because Android simply does not send them.

I tried to apply the solution described in the post:

Error: Jsonexception: End of input at Character 0, when sending Android information to a PHP Webservice

The App this time sent the message, but PHP received it like this: zé = z%C3%A9

Answer 1

Java Code in Android App:

String solicitacao = URLEncoder.encode(txSolicitacao.getText().toString(), "UTF-8");
String descricao = URLEncoder.encode(txDescricao.getText().toString(), "UTF-8");

PHP code in Backend:

$solicitacao = urldecode(rawurldecode($arrayJson["cha_solicitacao"]));
$descricao = urldecode(rawurldecode($arrayJson["cha_des_texto"]));

urldecode() = converts the + signal to spaces. If you do not use this command, the string follows this way:

here+go+one+example

The problem is that the "+" sign will always be converted to space.

In this case, I think the best option is to send Character entities so that they do not have accented characters in the String. Upon receiving the String json, PHP can parse and replace the Character entities for the proper special characters, so it is possible to save to the database.