How to send a HTTP POST Request in Delphi using WinInet api

Question

I am trying to make HTTP Requests from Delphi using the WinInet functions.

So far I have:

function request:string;
var
  hNet,hURL,hRequest: HINTERNET;
begin
  hNet := InternetOpen(PChar('User Agent'),INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_PRECONFIG or INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_PRECONFIG, nil, nil, 0);
  if Assigned(hNet) then 
  begin
  try
    hURL := InternetConnect(hNet,PChar('http://example.com'),INTERNET_DEFAULT_HTTP_PORT,nil,nil,INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP,0,DWORD(0));
    if(hURL<>nil) then
      hRequest := HttpOpenRequest(hURL, 'POST', PChar('param=value'),'HTTP/1.0',PChar(''), nil, INTERNET_FLAG_RELOAD or INTERNET_FLAG_PRAGMA_NOCACHE,0);
    if(hRequest<>nil) then
      HttpSendRequest(hRequest, nil, 0, nil, 0);
    InternetCloseHandle(hNet);
  except
    on E : Exception do
      ShowMessage(E.ClassName+' error raised, with message : '+E.Message);
  end;
  end
end;

But this doesn't do anything (I am sniffing network http traffic to see if it works). I have successfully used InternetOpenURL but I also need to send POST request and that function doesn't do that.

Could someone show me a simple example? The result I want is to get the http response page in a var as string.

Answer 1

I got all the url/filename part messed up with the previous code. I'm using this from Jeff DeVore now and it's working fine:

function request(const AUrl, AData: AnsiString; blnSSL: Boolean = True): AnsiString;
var
  aBuffer     : Array[0..4096] of Char;
  Header      : TStringStream;
  BufStream   : TMemoryStream;
  sMethod     : AnsiString;
  BytesRead   : Cardinal;
  pSession    : HINTERNET;
  pConnection : HINTERNET;
  pRequest    : HINTERNET;
  parsedURL   : TStringArray;
  port        : Integer;
  flags       : DWord;
begin
  ParsedUrl := ParseUrl(AUrl);

  Result := '';

  pSession := InternetOpen(nil, INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_PRECONFIG, nil, nil, 0);

  if Assigned(pSession) then
  try
    if blnSSL then
      Port := INTERNET_DEFAULT_HTTPS_PORT
    else
      Port := INTERNET_DEFAULT_HTTP_PORT;
    pConnection := InternetConnect(pSession, PChar(ParsedUrl[0]), port, nil, nil, INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP, 0, 0);

    if Assigned(pConnection) then
    try
      if (AData = '') then
        sMethod := 'GET'
      else
        sMethod := 'POST';

      if blnSSL then
        flags := INTERNET_FLAG_SECURE or INTERNET_FLAG_KEEP_CONNECTION
      else
        flags := INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP;

      pRequest := HTTPOpenRequest(pConnection, PChar(sMethod), PChar(ParsedUrl[1]), nil, nil, nil, flags, 0);

      if Assigned(pRequest) then
      try
        Header := TStringStream.Create('');
        try
          with Header do
          begin
            WriteString('Host: ' + ParsedUrl[0] + sLineBreak);
            WriteString('User-Agent: Custom program 1.0'+SLineBreak);
            WriteString('Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8'+SLineBreak);
            WriteString('Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5' + SLineBreak);
            WriteString('Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7'+SLineBreak);
            WriteString('Keep-Alive: 300'+ SLineBreak);
            WriteString('Connection: keep-alive'+ SlineBreak+SLineBreak);
          end;

          HttpAddRequestHeaders(pRequest, PChar(Header.DataString), Length(Header.DataString), HTTP_ADDREQ_FLAG_ADD);

          if HTTPSendRequest(pRequest, nil, 0, Pointer(AData), Length(AData)) then
          begin
            BufStream := TMemoryStream.Create;
            try
              while InternetReadFile(pRequest, @aBuffer, SizeOf(aBuffer), BytesRead) do
              begin
                if (BytesRead = 0) then Break;
                BufStream.Write(aBuffer, BytesRead);
              end;

              aBuffer[0] := #0;
              BufStream.Write(aBuffer, 1);
              Result := PChar(BufStream.Memory);
            finally
              BufStream.Free;
            end;
          end;
        finally
          Header.Free;
        end;
      finally
        InternetCloseHandle(pRequest);
      end;
    finally
      InternetCloseHandle(pConnection);
    end;
  finally
    InternetCloseHandle(pSession);
  end;
end;

ParseUrl is a function that splits a URL in "hostname / filename" and TStringArray is an array of strings. I still have to review the code tomorrow but it looks fine and in my sniffer I saw the post data and headers being sent.

Answer 2

Personally I prefer to use the synapse library for all of my TCP/IP work. For example, a simple HTTP post can be coded as:

uses
  httpsend;

function testpost;
begin
  stm := tStringstream.create('param=value');
  try
    HttpPostBinary('http://example.com',Stm);
  finally
    stm.free;
  end;
end;

The library is well written and very easy to modify to suit your specific requirements. The latest subversion release works without any problems for both Delphi 2009 and Delphi 2010. This framework is not component based, but rather is a series of classes and procedures which well in a multi-threaded environment.

Answer 3

The third parameter (lpszObjectName) to HttpOpenRequest should be the URL you wish to request. That's why the documentation describes the fifth parameter (lpszReferer) as "a pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies the URL of the document from which the URL in the request (lpszObjectName) was obtained."

The posted data gets sent with HttpSendRequest; the lpOptional parameter is described like this:

Pointer to a buffer containing any optional data to be sent immediately after the request headers. This parameter is generally used for POST and PUT operations. The optional data can be the resource or information being posted to the server. This parameter can be NULL if there is no optional data to send.

The second parameter to InternetOpen should be just the server name; it should not include the protocol. The protocol you specify with the sixth parameter.

After you've sent the request, you can read the response with InternetReadFile and InternetQueryDataAvailable.

Don't just check whether the API functions return zero and then proceed on the next line. If they fail, call GetLastError to find out why. The code you've posted will not raise exceptions, so it's futile to catch any. (And it's foolish to "handle" them the way you're doing so anyway. Don't catch an exception that you don't already know how to fix. Let everything else go up to the caller, or the caller's caller, etc.)