Make an https request using sockets on linux

Question

How do I make an http request using sockets on linux? currently, I\'m getting

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
//etc
Location: https://server.com

Answer 1

https requests look just like http requests, but with transparent encryption of the actual communication between the client and the server, and on a different default port. The good news is that transparent encryption allows you to program just like you're writing a regular HTTP client. The bad news is that the encryption is complex enough that you need a specialized library to implement it for you.

One such library is OpenSSL. Using OpenSSL, the minimal code for a client would look like this:

#include 

// first connect to the remote as usual, but use the port 443 instead of 80

// initialize OpenSSL - do this once and stash ssl_ctx in a global var
SSL_load_error_strings ();
SSL_library_init ();
SSL_CTX *ssl_ctx = SSL_CTX_new (SSLv23_client_method ());

// create an SSL connection and attach it to the socket
SSL *conn = SSL_new(ssl_ctx);
SSL_set_fd(conn, sock);

// perform the SSL/TLS handshake with the server - when on the
// server side, this would use SSL_accept()
int err = SSL_connect(conn);
if (err != 1)
   abort(); // handle error

// now proceed with HTTP traffic, using SSL_read instead of recv() and
// SSL_write instead of send(), and SSL_shutdown/SSL_free before close()