I am getting the error bad request when I try to send a json object with authentication. I had a look at How to send a JSON object over HttpClient Request with Android? but it does not solve my problem.
public void getServerData() throws JSONException, ClientProtocolException, IOException {
    ArrayList<String> stringData = new ArrayList<String>();
    DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    ResponseHandler <String> resonseHandler = new BasicResponseHandler();
    byte[] data = "myusername:mypassword".getBytes("UTF-8");
    String encoding = Base64.encodeToString(data, Base64.DEFAULT);
    HttpPost postMethod = new HttpPost("http://url/email_check.json");
    postMethod.setHeader(HTTP.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/json");
    postMethod.setHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + encoding);
    JSONObject json = new JSONObject();
    json.put("email","somebody@email.com");
    postMethod.setEntity(new ByteArrayEntity(json.toString().getBytes("UTF8")));
    String response = httpClient.execute(postMethod,resonseHandler);
    Log.e("response :", response);
    }
The line String response = httpClient.execute(postMethod,resonseHandler); causes a ClientProtocolException as follows:
cause: org.apache.http.client.HttpResponseException: Bad Request
detailMessage: Bad Request
stackState: (id=830103290336)
stackTrace: null
statusCode: 400
Any idea what is wrong?