Open URL from C++ code

Question

how can I open a URL from my C++ program?

In ruby you can do

%x(open https://google.com)

What's the equivalent in C++? I wonder if there's a platform-independent solution. But if there isn't, I'd like the Unix/Mac better :)

Here's my code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <fstream>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char url[1000] = "https://www.google.com";

    std::fstream fs;
    fs.open(url);
    fs.close();

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Here's an example in windows code using winsock.

#include <winsock2.h>
#include <windows.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#pragma comment(lib,"ws2_32.lib")
using namespace std;

string website_HTML;
locale local;


void get_Website(char *url );

int main ()
{
    //open website
    get_Website("www.google.com" );

    //format website HTML
    for (size_t i=0; i<website_HTML.length(); ++i) 
        website_HTML[i]= tolower(website_HTML[i],local);

    //display HTML
    cout <<website_HTML;

    cout<<"\n\n";



    return 0;
}



//***************************
void get_Website(char *url )
{
    WSADATA wsaData;
    SOCKET Socket;
    SOCKADDR_IN SockAddr;


    int lineCount=0;
    int rowCount=0;

    struct hostent *host;
    char *get_http= new char[256];

        memset(get_http,' ', sizeof(get_http) );
        strcpy(get_http,"GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: ");
        strcat(get_http,url);
        strcat(get_http,"\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n");

        if (WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2,2), &wsaData) != 0) 
        {
            cout << "WSAStartup failed.\n";
            system("pause");
            //return 1;
        }

        Socket=socket(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,IPPROTO_TCP);
        host = gethostbyname(url);

        SockAddr.sin_port=htons(80);
        SockAddr.sin_family=AF_INET;
        SockAddr.sin_addr.s_addr = *((unsigned long*)host->h_addr);

        cout << "Connecting to "<< url<<" ...\n";

        if(connect(Socket,(SOCKADDR*)(&SockAddr),sizeof(SockAddr)) != 0)
        {
            cout << "Could not connect";
            system("pause");
            //return 1;
        }

        cout << "Connected.\n";     
        send(Socket,get_http, strlen(get_http),0 );

        char buffer[10000];

        int nDataLength;
            while ((nDataLength = recv(Socket,buffer,10000,0)) > 0)
            {       
                int i = 0;

                while (buffer[i] >= 32 || buffer[i] == '\n' || buffer[i] == '\r') 
                {                    
                    website_HTML+=buffer[i];                     
                    i += 1;
                }               
            }
        closesocket(Socket);
        WSACleanup();

            delete[] get_http;
}