Appending to given formdata for http post - scala

Question

I am calling the following helper function from an action to make a syncronous HTTP-post with a special key-value pair appended to the URL-parameters in formdata:
def synchronousPost(url: String, formdata: Map[String, Seq[String]], timeout: Duration=Duration.create(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS)): String = {
import ExecutionContext.Implicits.global
val params = formdata.map { case (k, v) => "%s=%s".format(k, URLEncoder.encode(v.head, "UTF-8")) }.mkString("&")
val future: Future[WSResponse] = ws.url(url).
withHttpHeaders(("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")).
post(params)
try {
Await.result(future, timeout)
future.value.get.get.body
} catch {
case ex: Exception =>
Logger.error(ex.toString)
ex.toString
}
}
It is called like this:
def act = Action { request =>
request.body.asFormUrlEncoded match {
case Some(formdata) =>
synchronousPost(url, formdata + ("handshake" -> List("ok"))) match {
Actually it is copy-pasted from some old gist and I am quite sure it can be rewritten in a cleaner way.
How can the line val params = ... be rewritten in a cleaner way? It seems to be low level.
The original formdata comes in from request.body.asFormUrlEncoded and I simply need to append the handshake parameter to the formdata-map and send the original request back to the sender to do the handshake.

Answer 1

Since formdata is a Map[String, Seq[String]], a data type for which a default WSBodyWritable is provided, you can simply use it as the request body directly:
val future: Future[WSResponse] = ws.url(url)
.withHttpHeaders(("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"))
.post(formdata)
Incidentally, it's considered bad form to use Await when it's easy to make Play controllers return a Future[Result] using Action.async, e.g:
def asyncPost(url: String, formdata: Map[String, Seq[String]]): Future[String] = {
ws.url(url)
.withHttpHeaders(("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"))
.post(formdata)
.map(_.body)
}
def action = Action.async { request =>
request.body.asFormUrlEncoded match {
case Some(formdata) =>
asyncPost(url, formdata + ("handshake" -> List("ok"))).map { body =>
Ok("Here is the body: " + body)
} recover {
case e =>
Logger.error(e)
InternalServerError(e.getMessage)
}
case None => Future.successful(BadRequest("No form data given"))
}
}