C: how to read a webpage

Question

I'm trying to open a connection to a webpage (e.g. www.google.com) via localhost, port 80.

How can I do this programatically in C? I want get all the HTML headers and not just the content ;(

I hope someone can help.

Many thanks in advance,

Hmm ... read [Beej's Guides to Network Programming](http://beej.us/guide/). — pmg, Aug 15 '11 at 12:10
What have you tried so far? Did you try using a library like libcurl? What specifically are you having trouble with? — Mat, Aug 15 '11 at 12:10
Basically, I have a HTTP request stored in a buffer. I want to apply this HTTP request to localhost and get the response. I'm looking around at how I can do this. Unfortunately, with libcurl, you need to give it a url, not a text HTTP request. — Eamorr, Aug 15 '11 at 13:20

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 15 '11 at 12:31

4

Here is some example code on how to do this with libcurl:

There is another one right there, that shows you how to get some header data:

These examples and many others are available as part of the libcurl distribution. It should more than get you started.

answered Aug 15 '11 at 12:31

skorks

I think I'm going to go with libcurl... Many thanks for the response. – Eamorr Aug 15 '11 at 13:09

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '11 at 12:57

Summarized process:

DNS resolution for the hostname (using getaddrinfo())
Open a stream socket (TCP) to the resolved IP address and port
Send GET request (see protocol in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol)

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com
Read headers - Terminated by \r\n\r\n
Read body
Close socket

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 01 '19 at 10:35

0

Minimal runnable POSIX example

In this answer, I provide a minimal runnable POSIX C example: How to make an HTTP get request in C without libcurl?

It allows you to do:

./wget example.com

answered Feb 01 '19 at 10:35

3 Answers3