HTTP POST requests

Networking & Multiplayer
#1

Okay, so I’ve developed a simple tetris clone applet that I want to send score and user information to a PHP script after the game is over.

The PHP form then takes this information and submits it to a MySQL database (JDBC is not an option, I do not have remote access to the web server)

For some reason though, it doesn’t seem to work. If I manually execute the PHP file, it works fine (it creates a log of all scores submitted so I can debug this), but when I try to use the Java applet it seems to connect but it does not do anything afterwards. My code looks like this:

    
public void sendScores() {
        String[] stats;
        stats = Tetris.getGameStats();
        sentScores = true;
        URL url;
        URLConnection urlConn;
        DataOutputStream printout;
        
        try {
            String q = URLEncoder.encode("user_id", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(strUserId, "UTF-8");
            q += "&" + URLEncoder.encode("ruleset", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(strRuleSet, "UTF-8");
            q += "&" + URLEncoder.encode("gametype", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(strGameType, "UTF-8");
            q += "&" + URLEncoder.encode("score", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(stats[0], "UTF-8");
            q += "&" + URLEncoder.encode("time", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(stats[1], "UTF-8");
            q += "&" + URLEncoder.encode("timelimit", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(strTimeLimit, "UTF-8");
            q += "&" + URLEncoder.encode("ruleset", "UTF-8") + "=" + URLEncoder.encode(strScoreLimit, "UTF-8");            
            System.out.println(q);
            url = new URL (getCodeBase().toString() + "submitScore.php");
            System.out.println(url.toString());
            urlConn = url.openConnection();
            urlConn.setDoOutput (true);
            urlConn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
            printout = new DataOutputStream (urlConn.getOutputStream ());
            printout.writeBytes(q);
            printout.flush();
            printout.close();
            System.out.println("sendScore() executed");
        } catch (Exception e) { }
        
    }

As you can see I followed Java World Tip #34 very closely.
The applet does NOT throw an exception, so it appears to have executed all the code correctly, but it doesn’t appear to actually send the information to the script. There is very little out there beyond the javaworld site. If anyone wants to look at the php file I’ve attached it as well. It is supposed to create a log file even if no data is actually posted to the php script.

#2

I can’t quite tell what you’re doing wrong but, if you’re interested… I wrote a highscore script for somebody a few months ago that worked for him very well. if you wanna use it I don’t care… no credit needed: http://woogley.net/misc/Highscore

#3

You are sending with GET! But in your PHP file, you are reading from POST. There is nothing there in POST, because all your data is sent using GET.

GET: Uses the “?..&…&” in the URL.

#4

Also do not use:


        } catch (Exception e) { }

At least put some text out:


        } catch (Exception e) {
             System.out.println("Error encountered: " + e);
        }
#5

oh, I didn’t know I was. I’ll try changing $_POST to $_GET and see what happens.

Still though, its not doing anything. At very minimum the PHP script should write to my log file even if it doesn’t accept any variables. Unless I’m mistaken here?

#6

As kingaschi pointed out…

Never ever ever ever catch an exception with an empty catch block.

You can have all kinds of errors you know nothing about because you are hiding them.