How to send HTTP body plain text for GET method?

Question

I had a problem, I use the iGDB REST API which need to send some plain text for some endpoints with GET method.

There is no problem with PostMan (by selecting "Body" > "raw" & paste my query), but when I try with Objective-C, an error appear telling me "GET method must not have a body"...

Here is the code used in my app:

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"MY_URL"]];
[request addValue:@"text/plain" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-Type"];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"GET"];
[request setHTTPBody:[@"sort popularity desc;" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

EDIT 02/10/2019

Trying to add each filters in headers not working...

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"MY_URL"]];
[request setValue:[[@"id,name,first_release_date,release_dates,cover,platforms" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] base64EncodedStringWithOptions:0] forHTTPHeaderField:@"fields"];
[request setValue:[[@"popularity desc" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] base64EncodedStringWithOptions:0] forHTTPHeaderField:@"sort"];
[request setValue:[[@"5" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] base64EncodedStringWithOptions:0] forHTTPHeaderField:@"limit"];
[request setValue:[[@"0" dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] base64EncodedStringWithOptions:0] forHTTPHeaderField:@"offset"];

Thanks in advance for any replies !

Essy

Would love to know how you fixed this since I'm working with the same issue. – Rabjohn

Answer 1

It's no longer possible to send a GET request with a body, you'll have to send the data via the query string of the URL, either by building the string manually or with the help of NS(Mutable)URLComponents.

---

As per the iOS 13 release notes, GET requests are no longer allowed to have a body:

All URLSessionTask instances with a GET HTTP method that contain a body now produce the error NSURLErrorDataLengthExceedsMaximum. (46025234)

This makes URLSession more conformant with the HTTP/1.1 RFC:

A message-body MUST NOT be included in a request if the specification of the request method (section 5.1.1) does not allow sending an entity-body in requests.

Ripe

Answer 2

If I get true your question, you can set parameters to your request header when you get you can set like below.

  [request addValue:@"valueForKey1" forHTTPHeaderField:@"key1"];

  [request addValue:@"valueForKey2" forHTTPHeaderField:@"key2"];

If you send a data format so,

NSString *stringValueOfParameters =[NSString stringWithFormat:@"userName:blabla"];
NSData *convertedDat=[stringValueOfParameters dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSString *headerValue=[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Basic %@",[convertedDat base64EncodedStringWithOptions:0]];

[request setValue:headerValue forHTTPHeaderField:@"headerKey"];

// Edit

You must try kinda like that, directly write a Dictionary or like below write your JSON parameters as NSString then convert it to Data.

NSDictionary *dictParams = @{ @"fields" : @[@"id",@"name",@"first_release_date",@"release_dates",@"cover",@"platforms"], @"sort" : @"popularity desc", @"limit": @5, @"offset":@0 };

// this is taken from an example

NSString *jsonString = @"{\"ID\":{\"Content\":268,\"type\":\"text\"},\"ContractTemplateID\":{\"Content\":65,\"type\":\"text\"}}";
NSData *data = [jsonString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

Then try it to set header.

Chromic

Thanks for your response ! But it seems not work ... My full payload is "fields id,name,first_release_date,release_dates,cover,platforms; sort popularity desc; limit 10; offset 0;" but when I try to add a parameter for each, the response data is not affected... – Essy

hey @Essy can you look at my updated answer, try the code all parameters in a string then convert it to stringencoding data format. – Chromic

Thanks @elia, but it's not working too, please check my edited post to see if I do it correctly :). – Essy