Posting multipart form data

For testing I needed to simulate a web-browser doing a file-upload. I tried to Google this but I couldn't find a suitable answer that worked. So I rolled my own. This might save other people some trouble too. First comes the MIMEMultipart object, which stores the body of a multipart post:

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.File;

public class MIMEMultipart 
{
    StringBuilder text;
    static String CRLF = "\r\n";
    String boundary;
    public MIMEMultipart()
    {
        text = new StringBuilder();
        boundary = Long.toHexString(
            System.currentTimeMillis()); 
    }
    public String getContent()
    {
        return text.toString();
    }
    public String getBoundary()
    {
        return boundary;
    }
    public int getLength()
    {
        return text.length();
    }
    public void putStandardParam( String name, 
        String value, String encoding )
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        sb.append("--" + boundary).append(CRLF);
        sb.append("Content-Disposition: form-data; "
            +"name=\""+name+"\"");
        sb.append(CRLF);
        sb.append("Content-Type: text/plain; charset=" 
            + encoding );
        sb.append(CRLF);
        sb.append(CRLF);
        sb.append(value);
        sb.append(CRLF);
        text.append( sb.toString() );
    }
    public void putBinaryFileParam( String name, 
        String fileName, String mimeType, 
        String encoding ) throws Exception
    {
        // compose the header
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        sb.append( "--"+boundary );
        sb.append( CRLF );
        sb.append("content-disposition: form-data; "
            +"name=\"" );
        sb.append( name );
        sb.append( "\";  filename=\"");
        sb.append( fileName );
        sb.append( "\"" );
        sb.append( CRLF );
        sb.append("Content-Type: "+mimeType ); 
        sb.append( CRLF );
        sb.append("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
        sb.append( CRLF ); // need two of these
        sb.append( CRLF );
        text.append( sb.toString() );
        // now for the file
        File input = new File( fileName );
        FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(input);
        byte[] data = new byte[(int)input.length()];
        fis.read( data );
        fis.close();
        text.append( new String(data,encoding) );
        text.append( CRLF );
    }
    public void finish()
    {
        text.append( "--" );
        text.append( boundary );
        text.append( "--" );
        text.append( CRLF );
    }
}

To call it, open a standard Java URLConnection:

private static void printResponse( 
    URLConnection conn )
{
    try
    {
        InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();
        while ( is.available() != 0 )
        {
            byte[] data = new byte[is.available()];
            is.read( data );
            System.out.println(new String(data,
               "UTF-8"));
        }
    }
    catch ( Exception e )
    {
        e.printStackTrace( System.out );
    }
}....
URL url2 = new URL("http://localhost:8080/strip");
URLConnection conn = url2.openConnection();
MIMEMultipart mmp = new MIMEMultipart();
mmp.putStandardParam( Params.FORMAT,Formats.STIL,
    "UTF-8" );
mmp.putStandardParam( Params.STYLE,"TEI/drama",
    "UTF-8" );
mmp.putBinaryFileParam( Params.RECIPE,"recipe.xml",
    "application/xml","UTF-8" );
mmp.putBinaryFileParam( Params.XML,
    "act1-scene2-F1.xml",
    "application/xml","UTF-8" );
mmp.finish();
conn.setDoOutput(true);
conn.setUseCaches(false);
((HttpURLConnection)conn).setRequestMethod("POST");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept-Charset", "UTF-8");
conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", 
    "multipart/form-data, boundary="
    +mmp.getBoundary());
conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", 
    Integer.toString(mmp.getLength()));
OutputStream output = conn.getOutputStream();
output.write( mmp.getContent().getBytes() );
output.flush();
output.close();
// get response and print it
printResponse( conn );

Extend MIMEMultipart if you like by adding a method for plain text files and other types of part.