How to Send POST Data in Android

When developing for Android, it's essential to know how to send POST data to remote servers. This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to achieve this using both the deprecated AsyncTask and a more modern approach.

Deprecated AsyncTask Method

The following code snippet demonstrates how to send POST data using the AsyncTask class:

public class CallAPI extends AsyncTask {

    public CallAPI() {
        //set context variables if required
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPreExecute() {
        super.onPreExecute();
    }

    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(String... params) {
        String urlString = params[0]; // URL to call
        String data = params[1]; //data to post
        OutputStream out = null;

        try {
            URL url = new URL(urlString);
            HttpURLConnection urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            out = new BufferedOutputStream(urlConnection.getOutputStream());

            BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(out, "UTF-8"));
            writer.write(data);
            writer.flush();
            writer.close();
            out.close();

            urlConnection.connect();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }
    }
}

Updated Method for Android 6.0

public void postData() {
    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://www.yoursite.com/script.php");

    try {
        List nameValuePairs = new ArrayList(2);
        nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("id", "12345"));
        nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("stringdata", "Hi"));
        httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));

        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
        
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
    }
}