Post a file to a web page as part of a Maven build process

In a previous post Rest Invocation with Maven I've seen how to invoke a REST service from a Maven Pom file, using the Maven Groovy plugin.

In this post I will show how to upload a file to a webpage, still using some Groovy code.

We will do this in 2 different ways: using plain Apache Http Client and using Rest-assured, the library already described here in this previous post, Rest Assured or Rest-very-Easy

Apache Http Client

Groovy Script

import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.MultipartEntity
import org.apache.http.entity.mime.content.FileBody
import org.apache.http.auth.AuthScope
import org.apache.http.auth.UsernamePasswordCredentials

def name = "${input_file}"
log.info( "Archive file: $name" )

def f = new File(name)

// The execution:
DefaultHttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient()
httpclient.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(
     new AuthScope(AuthScope.ANY_HOST, AuthScope.ANY_PORT), 
     new UsernamePasswordCredentials( "${username}", 
          "${password}" )
)

def post = new HttpPost("${form_endpoint}")
def entity = new MultipartEntity()
def fileBody = new FileBody(f)
entity.addPart("file", fileBody)
post.setEntity(entity)

def response = httpclient.execute(post)
def status = response.getStatusLine()
if( !(status ==~ /.*OK.*/) )
     fail("Unable to deploy. Return status code: $status" )
else
     log.info("Deployment Successful: Result status code $status")

Maven configuration

    
      deploy
      
        
          org.apache.httpcomponents
          httpmime
          4.2.1
        
        
          org.apache.httpcomponents
          httpcore
          4.2.1
        
        
          org.apache.httpcomponents
          httpclient
          4.2.1
        
      
      
        
          
            org.codehaus.groovy.maven
            gmaven-plugin
            1.0
            
              
                initialize
                
                  execute
                
                
                  
                
              
            
          
        
      
    

Rest-assured

The solution based on HttpClient works fine but it's a little clumsy. We have already agreed that having a script embedded in a pom.xml file is handy but not as clean as writing a full featured Maven Plugin. But even without a complete Maven Plugin we can improve the readability of the script thanks to Rest-assured and the fluent style that allows us to write a much cleared script.

And at the same time we can reduce the number of the direct dependencies in our pom.xml, since we are delegating the rest-assured itself to declare what it needs, that by the way, is again Apache Http Client, since Rest-assured is based on it.

Notice that my script distinguish between .zip and non zip input files, but this distinction it's only dued to the fact that my endpoint was "confused" when I was passing an .zip file without specifying any mimetype. The default mimetype for rest-assured, when you use an overloaded version of .multipart() is application/octet-stream

Groovy Script

import static com.jayway.restassured.RestAssured.*;

def name = "${input_file}"

log.info("Uploading Archive file: $name")

//we have to determine the mimetype to correctly support both zip and xml

def mimeType = name.endsWith("zip") ? "application/zip" : "application/xml"

def f = new File(name)

def response =  with()
   .auth().basic("${username}", "${password}")
   .multiPart("file", f, mimeType)
   .post("${form_endpoint")

def status = response.getStatusLine()
if( !(status ==~ /.*OK.*/) )
     fail("Unable to deploy. Return status code: $status" )
else
     log.info("Deployment Successful: Result status code $status")

Maven configuration

    
      deploy
      
        
          com.jayway.restassured
          rest-assured
          1.4
        
      
      
        
          
            org.codehaus.groovy.maven
            gmaven-plugin
            1.0
            
              
                initialize
                
                  execute