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

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

#include 
#include 
#include  // _bstr_t

HRESULT hr;
CComPtr 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();