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 o

Answer 1

Here is some code that will work with no need to use any 3rd party library: First define your gateway, user, password and any other parameters you need to send to this specific server.

#define USERNAME "user"
#define PASSWORD "your password"
#define GATEWAY "your gateway"

Here is the code itself:

HINTERNET hOpenHandle, hResourceHandle, hConnectHandle;
const TCHAR* szHeaders = _T("Content-Type:application/json; charset=utf-8\r\n");


hOpenHandle = InternetOpen(_T("HTTPS"), INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_DIRECT, NULL, NULL, 0);
if (hOpenHandle == NULL)
{
    return false;
}


hConnectHandle = InternetConnect(hOpenHandle,
    GATEWAY,
    INTERNET_DEFAULT_HTTPS_PORT,
    NULL, NULL, INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP,
    0, 1);

if (hConnectHandle == NULL)
{
    InternetCloseHandle(hOpenHandle);
    return false;
}


hResourceHandle = HttpOpenRequest(hConnectHandle,
    _T("POST"),
    GATEWAY,
    NULL, NULL, NULL, INTERNET_FLAG_SECURE | INTERNET_FLAG_KEEP_CONNECTION,
    1);

if (hResourceHandle == NULL)
{
    InternetCloseHandle(hOpenHandle);
    InternetCloseHandle(hConnectHandle);
    return false;
}

InternetSetOption(hResourceHandle, INTERNET_OPTION_USERNAME, (LPVOID)USERNAME, _tcslen(USERNAME));
InternetSetOption(hResourceHandle, INTERNET_OPTION_PASSWORD, (LPVOID)PASSWORD, _tcslen(PASSWORD));

std::string buf;
if (HttpSendRequest(hResourceHandle, szHeaders, 0, NULL, 0))
{
    while (true)
    {
        std::string part;
        DWORD size;
        if (!InternetQueryDataAvailable(hResourceHandle, &size, 0, 0))break;
        if (size == 0)break;
        part.resize(size);
        if (!InternetReadFile(hResourceHandle, &part[0], part.size(), &size))break;
        if (size == 0)break;
        part.resize(size);
        buf.append(part);
    }
}

if (!buf.empty())
{
    // Get data back
}

InternetCloseHandle(hResourceHandle);
InternetCloseHandle(hConnectHandle);
InternetCloseHandle(hOpenHandle);

That should work on a Win32 API environment.

Here is an example.