Passing image from android to mysql and back?

Question

Java

Hello, I am writing a simple chat on Android Studio.

Text information (author, message text, addressee) is driven into a HashMap, converted into a byte array. I write to the output stream. Nothing out of the ordinary here:

try {
            URL url_link = new URL("адрес обработчика данных на сайте");

            HttpURLConnection my_connect = (HttpURLConnection) url_link.openConnection();

            my_connect.setRequestMethod("POST");

            my_connect.setReadTimeout(5000);
            my_connect.setConnectTimeout(5000);

            my_connect.setDoOutput(true);
            my_connect.setDoInput(true);

            StringBuilder stringbuilder = new StringBuilder();

            HashMap<String, String> map_array = new HashMap<String, String>();

            map_array.put("user_from", user_from);
            map_array.put("user_to", user_to);
            map_array.put("text_m", text_m);
            map_array.put("img_m", img_m);           //            тут проблема
            map_array.put("create", "yes");


            for (Map.Entry<String, String> p_data : map_array.entrySet()) {
                stringbuilder.append(p_data.getKey() + "=" + p_data.getValue() + "&");
            }

            byte[] byte_arr = stringbuilder.toString().getBytes("UTF-8");

            OutputStream my_outs = my_connect.getOutputStream();

            my_outs.write(byte_arr);
            my_connect.connect();
}

Now it's time for the images. I launch the intent with the camera, take a picture, write the photo to a file, at the end I get a bitmap

And I didn’t understand how to proceed further.

1) I tried to encode a string in base64 and send it to the server, saving it immediately to the muscle. Of course, I realized that it was stupid. The string is gigantic, when sent back to android, it takes much more than 64kb and does not fit into string.

ByteArrayOutputStream byteArrayOutputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

bitmap.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.PNG, 100, byteArrayOutputStream);

byte[] bytes = byteArrayOutputStream.toByteArray();

String myl = Base64.encodeToString(bytes, Base64.DEFAULT);

2) Or do I need to decode base64 on the server, then do something with it and save it? Maybe you need to somehow create a photo already on the server from a string using PHP GD?

3) Or do I need to transfer Bitmap directly somehow?

Tell me, dear experts, where to dig, there are many options, the information on the Internet is so-so, I don’t want to spend days working through each option. Maybe there are better solutions?

Answer 1

Do POST, encode in the usual way described in RFC
encoding="multipart/form-data"
This is the direct way.
The second option is to use WebSocket and send binary data through it, as well as data in your chat.