How do you make a HTTP request with C++?

Question

Is there any way to easily make a HTTP request with C++? Specifically, I want to download the contents of a page (an API) and check the contents to see if it contains a 1 or a 0. Is it also possible to download the contents into a string?

Answer 1

Generally I'd recommend something cross-platform like cURL, POCO, or Qt. However, here is a Windows example!:

#include <atlbase.h>
#include <msxml6.h>
#include <comutil.h> // _bstr_t

HRESULT hr;
CComPtr<IXMLHTTPRequest> request;

hr = request.CoCreateInstance(CLSID_XMLHTTP60);
hr = request->open(
    _bstr_t("GET"),
    _bstr_t("https://www.google.com/images/srpr/logo11w.png"),
    _variant_t(VARIANT_FALSE),
    _variant_t(),
    _variant_t());
hr = request->send(_variant_t());

// get status - 200 if succuss
long status;
hr = request->get_status(&status);

// load image data (if url points to an image)
VARIANT responseVariant;
hr = request->get_responseStream(&responseVariant);
IStream* stream = (IStream*)responseVariant.punkVal;
CImage *image = new CImage();
image->Load(stream);
stream->Release();

Answer 2

Windows code:

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




int main( void ){

WSADATA wsaData;
SOCKET Socket;
SOCKADDR_IN SockAddr;
int lineCount=0;
int rowCount=0;
struct hostent *host;
locale local;
char buffer[10000];
int i = 0 ;
int nDataLength;
string website_HTML;

// website url
string url = "www.google.com";

//HTTP GET
string get_http = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: " + url + "\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.c_str());

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

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

    // send GET / HTTP
    send(Socket,get_http.c_str(), strlen(get_http.c_str()),0 );

    // recieve html
    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();

    // Display HTML source 
    cout<<website_HTML;

    // pause
    cout<<"\n\nPress ANY key to close.\n\n";
    cin.ignore(); cin.get(); 


 return 0;
}

Here is a much better implementation:

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

using std::string;

#pragma comment(lib,"ws2_32.lib")


HINSTANCE hInst;
WSADATA wsaData;
void mParseUrl(char *mUrl, string &serverName, string &filepath, string &filename);
SOCKET connectToServer(char *szServerName, WORD portNum);
int getHeaderLength(char *content);
char *readUrl2(char *szUrl, long &bytesReturnedOut, char **headerOut);


int main()
{
    const int bufLen = 1024;
    char *szUrl = "http://stackoverflow.com";
    long fileSize;
    char *memBuffer, *headerBuffer;
    FILE *fp;

    memBuffer = headerBuffer = NULL;

    if ( WSAStartup(0x101, &wsaData) != 0)
        return -1;


    memBuffer = readUrl2(szUrl, fileSize, &headerBuffer);
    printf("returned from readUrl\n");
    printf("data returned:\n%s", memBuffer);
    if (fileSize != 0)
    {
        printf("Got some data\n");
        fp = fopen("downloaded.file", "wb");
        fwrite(memBuffer, 1, fileSize, fp);
        fclose(fp);
         delete(memBuffer);
        delete(headerBuffer);
    }

    WSACleanup();
    return 0;
}


void mParseUrl(char *mUrl, string &serverName, string &filepath, string &filename)
{
    string::size_type n;
    string url = mUrl;

    if (url.substr(0,7) == "http://")
        url.erase(0,7);

    if (url.substr(0,8) == "https://")
        url.erase(0,8);

    n = url.find('/');
    if (n != string::npos)
    {
        serverName = url.substr(0,n);
        filepath = url.substr(n);
        n = filepath.rfind('/');
        filename = filepath.substr(n+1);
    }

    else
    {
        serverName = url;
        filepath = "/";
        filename = "";
    }
}

SOCKET connectToServer(char *szServerName, WORD portNum)
{
    struct hostent *hp;
    unsigned int addr;
    struct sockaddr_in server;
    SOCKET conn;

    conn = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
    if (conn == INVALID_SOCKET)
        return NULL;

    if(inet_addr(szServerName)==INADDR_NONE)
    {
        hp=gethostbyname(szServerName);
    }
    else
    {
        addr=inet_addr(szServerName);
        hp=gethostbyaddr((char*)&addr,sizeof(addr),AF_INET);
    }

    if(hp==NULL)
    {
        closesocket(conn);
        return NULL;
    }

    server.sin_addr.s_addr=*((unsigned long*)hp->h_addr);
    server.sin_family=AF_INET;
    server.sin_port=htons(portNum);
    if(connect(conn,(struct sockaddr*)&server,sizeof(server)))
    {
        closesocket(conn);
        return NULL;
    }
    return conn;
}

int getHeaderLength(char *content)
{
    const char *srchStr1 = "\r\n\r\n", *srchStr2 = "\n\r\n\r";
    char *findPos;
    int ofset = -1;

    findPos = strstr(content, srchStr1);
    if (findPos != NULL)
    {
        ofset = findPos - content;
        ofset += strlen(srchStr1);
    }

    else
    {
        findPos = strstr(content, srchStr2);
        if (findPos != NULL)
        {
            ofset = findPos - content;
            ofset += strlen(srchStr2);
        }
    }
    return ofset;
}

char *readUrl2(char *szUrl, long &bytesReturnedOut, char **headerOut)
{
    const int bufSize = 512;
    char readBuffer[bufSize], sendBuffer[bufSize], tmpBuffer[bufSize];
    char *tmpResult=NULL, *result;
    SOCKET conn;
    string server, filepath, filename;
    long totalBytesRead, thisReadSize, headerLen;

    mParseUrl(szUrl, server, filepath, filename);

    ///////////// step 1, connect //////////////////////
    conn = connectToServer((char*)server.c_str(), 80);

    ///////////// step 2, send GET request /////////////
    sprintf(tmpBuffer, "GET %s HTTP/1.0", filepath.c_str());
    strcpy(sendBuffer, tmpBuffer);
    strcat(sendBuffer, "\r\n");
    sprintf(tmpBuffer, "Host: %s", server.c_str());
    strcat(sendBuffer, tmpBuffer);
    strcat(sendBuffer, "\r\n");
    strcat(sendBuffer, "\r\n");
    send(conn, sendBuffer, strlen(sendBuffer), 0);

//    SetWindowText(edit3Hwnd, sendBuffer);
    printf("Buffer being sent:\n%s", sendBuffer);

    ///////////// step 3 - get received bytes ////////////////
    // Receive until the peer closes the connection
    totalBytesRead = 0;
    while(1)
    {
        memset(readBuffer, 0, bufSize);
        thisReadSize = recv (conn, readBuffer, bufSize, 0);

        if ( thisReadSize <= 0 )
            break;

        tmpResult = (char*)realloc(tmpResult, thisReadSize+totalBytesRead);

        memcpy(tmpResult+totalBytesRead, readBuffer, thisReadSize);
        totalBytesRead += thisReadSize;
    }

    headerLen = getHeaderLength(tmpResult);
    long contenLen = totalBytesRead-headerLen;
    result = new char[contenLen+1];
    memcpy(result, tmpResult+headerLen, contenLen);
    result[contenLen] = 0x0;
    char *myTmp;

    myTmp = new char[headerLen+1];
    strncpy(myTmp, tmpResult, headerLen);
    myTmp[headerLen] = NULL;
    delete(tmpResult);
    *headerOut = myTmp;

    bytesReturnedOut = contenLen;
    closesocket(conn);
    return(result);
}

Answer 3

Note that this does not require libcurl, Windows.h, or WinSock! No compilation of libraries, no project configuration, etc. I have this code working in Visual Studio 2017 c++ on Windows 10:

#pragma comment(lib, "urlmon.lib")

#include <urlmon.h>
#include <sstream>

using namespace std;

...

IStream* stream;
//Also works with https URL's - unsure about the extent of SSL support though.
HRESULT result = URLOpenBlockingStream(0, "http://google.com", &stream, 0, 0);
if (result != 0)
{
    return 1;
}
char buffer[100];
unsigned long bytesRead;
stringstream ss;
stream->Read(buffer, 100, &bytesRead);
while (bytesRead > 0U)
{
    ss.write(buffer, (long long)bytesRead);
    stream->Read(buffer, 100, &bytesRead);
}
stream.Release();
string resultString = ss.str();

I just figured out how to do this, as I wanted a simple API access script, libraries like libcurl were causing me all kinds of problems (even when I followed the directions...), and WinSock is just too low-level and complicated.

I'm not quite sure about all of the IStream reading code (particularly the while condition - feel free to correct/improve), but hey, it works, hassle free! (It makes sense to me that, since I used a blocking (synchronous) call, this is fine, that bytesRead would always be > 0U until the stream (ISequentialStream?) is finished being read, but who knows.)

See also: URL Monikers and Asynchronous Pluggable Protocol Reference

Answer 4

C++ does not provide any way to do it directly. It would entirely depend on what platforms and libraries that you have.

At worst case, you can use the boost::asio library to establish a TCP connection, send the HTTP headers (RFC 2616), and parse the responses directly. Looking at your application needs, this is simple enough to do.

Answer 5

On Linux, I tried cpp-netlib, libcurl, curlpp, urdl, boost::asio and considered Qt (but turned it down based on the license). All of these were either incomplete for this use, had sloppy interfaces, had poor documentation, were unmaintained or didn't support https.

Then, at the suggestion of https://stackoverflow.com/a/1012577/278976, I tried POCO. Wow, I wish I had seen this years ago. Here's an example of making an HTTP GET request:

http://xjia.heroku.com/2011/09/10/learning-poco-get-with-http/

POCO is free, open source (boost license). And no, I don't have any affiliation with the company; I just really like their interfaces. Great job guys (and gals).

http://pocoproject.org/download/index.html

Hope this helps someone... it took me three days to try all of these libraries out.

Answer 6

Although a little bit late. You may prefer https://github.com/Taymindis/backcurl .

It allows you to do http call on mobile c++ development. Suitable for Mobile game developement

bcl::init(); // init when using

bcl::execute<std::string>([&](bcl::Request *req) {
    bcl::setOpts(req, CURLOPT_URL , "http://www.google.com",
             CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1L,
             CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, &bcl::writeContentCallback,
             CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, req->dataPtr,
             CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "libcurl-agent/1.0",
             CURLOPT_RANGE, "0-200000"
            );
}, [&](bcl::Response * resp) {
    std::string ret =  std::string(resp->getBody<std::string>()->c_str());
    printf("Sync === %s\n", ret.c_str());
});


bcl::cleanUp(); // clean up when no more using