Save cURL content result into a string in C++

Question

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl;
  CURLcode res;

  curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.google.com");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0L);
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0L);
    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
  _getch();
  return 0;
}

string contents = "";

I would like to save the result of the curl html content in a string, how do I do this? It's a silly question but unfortunately, I couldn't find anywhere in the cURL examples for C++ thanks!

Answer 1

You will have to use CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION to set a callback for writing. I can't test to compile this right now, but the function should look something close to;

static std::string readBuffer;

static size_t WriteCallback(void *contents, size_t size, size_t nmemb, void *userp)
{ 
    size_t realsize = size * nmemb;
    readBuffer.append(contents, realsize);
    return realsize;
}

Then call it by doing;

readBuffer.clear();
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, WriteCallback);
// ...other curl options
res = curl_easy_perform(curl);

After the call, readBuffershould have your contents.

Edit: You can use CURLOPT_WRITEDATA to pass the buffer string instead of making it static. In this case I just made it static for simplicity. A good page to look (besides the linked example above) is here for an explanation of the options.

Edit2: As requested, here's a complete working example without the static string buffer;

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <curl/curl.h>


static size_t WriteCallback(void *contents, size_t size, size_t nmemb, void *userp)
{
    ((std::string*)userp)->append((char*)contents, size * nmemb);
    return size * nmemb;
}

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl;
  CURLcode res;
  std::string readBuffer;

  curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.google.com");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, WriteCallback);
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, &readBuffer);
    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);

    std::cout << readBuffer << std::endl;
  }
  return 0;
}

Answer 2

Using the 'new' C++11 lambda functionality, this can be done in a few lines of code.

#ifndef WIN32 #define __stdcall "" #endif //For compatibility with both Linux and Windows
std::string resultBody { };
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, &resultBody);
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, static_cast<size_t (__stdcall *)(char*, size_t, size_t, void*)>(
    [](char* ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, void* resultBody){
        *(static_cast<std::string*>(resultBody)) += std::string {ptr, size * nmemb};
        return size * nmemb;
    }
));

CURLcode curlResult = curl_easy_perform(curl);
std::cout << "RESULT BODY:\n" << resultBody << std::endl;
// Cleanup etc

Note the __stdcall cast is needed to comply to the C calling convention (cURL is a C library)

Answer 3

This might not work right away but should give you an idea:

#include <string>
#include <curl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
size_t write_data(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, FILE *stream) {
    size_t written;
    written = fwrite(ptr, size, nmemb, stream);
    return written;
}

int main() {
    std::string tempname = "temp";
    CURL *curl;
    CURLcode res;
    curl = curl_easy_init();
    if(curl) {
      FILE *fp = fopen(tempname.c_str(),"wb");
      curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.google.com");
      curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, write_data); 
      curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, fp);
      res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
      curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
      fclose(fp);
      fp = fopen(tempname.c_str(),"rb");
      fseek (fp , 0 , SEEK_END);
      long lSize = ftell (fp);
      rewind(fp);
      char *buffer = new char[lSize+1];
      fread (buffer, 1, lSize, fp);
      buffer[lSize] = 0;
      fclose(fp);
      std::string content(buffer);
      delete [] buffer;
    }
}

Answer 4

On my blog I have published a simple wrapper class to perform this task.

Usage example:

#include "HTTPDownloader.hpp"

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    HTTPDownloader downloader;
    std::string content = downloader.download("https://stackoverflow.com");
    std::cout << content << std::endl;
}

Here's the header file:

/**
 * HTTPDownloader.hpp
 *
 * A simple C++ wrapper for the libcurl easy API.
 *
 * Written by Uli Köhler (techoverflow.net)
 * Published under CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain)
 */
#ifndef HTTPDOWNLOADER_HPP
#define HTTPDOWNLOADER_HPP

#include <string>

/**
 * A non-threadsafe simple libcURL-easy based HTTP downloader
 */
class HTTPDownloader {
public:
    HTTPDownloader();
    ~HTTPDownloader();
    /**
     * Download a file using HTTP GET and store in in a std::string
     * @param url The URL to download
     * @return The download result
     */
    std::string download(const std::string& url);
private:
    void* curl;
};

#endif  /* HTTPDOWNLOADER_HPP */

Here's the source code:

/**
 * HTTPDownloader.cpp
 *
 * A simple C++ wrapper for the libcurl easy API.
 *
 * Written by Uli Köhler (techoverflow.net)
 * Published under CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain)
 */
#include "HTTPDownloader.hpp"
#include <curl/curl.h>
#include <curl/easy.h>
#include <curl/curlbuild.h>
#include <sstream>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

size_t write_data(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, void *stream) {
    string data((const char*) ptr, (size_t) size * nmemb);
    *((stringstream*) stream) << data;
    return size * nmemb;
}

HTTPDownloader::HTTPDownloader() {
    curl = curl_easy_init();
}

HTTPDownloader::~HTTPDownloader() {
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
}

string HTTPDownloader::download(const std::string& url) {
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, url.c_str());
    /* example.com is redirected, so we tell libcurl to follow redirection */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1L);
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL, 1); //Prevent "longjmp causes uninitialized stack frame" bug
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING, "deflate");
    std::stringstream out;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, write_data);
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, &out);
    /* Perform the request, res will get the return code */
    CURLcode res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    /* Check for errors */
    if (res != CURLE_OK) {
        fprintf(stderr, "curl_easy_perform() failed: %s\n",
                curl_easy_strerror(res));
    }
    return out.str();
}

Answer 5

Came out with useful, yet simple solution, which overloads std::ostream::operator<<

#include <ostream>

#include <curl/curl.h>

size_t curlCbToStream (
    char * buffer,
    size_t nitems,
    size_t size,
    std::ostream * sout
)
{
    *sout << buffer;

    return nitems * size;
}

std::ostream & operator<< (
    std::ostream & sout,
    CURL * request
)
{
    ::curl_easy_setopt(request, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, & sout);
    ::curl_easy_setopt(request, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, curlCbToStream);
    ::curl_easy_perform(request);

    return sout;
}

Possible drawback of taken approach could be:

typedef void CURL;

That means it covers all known pointer types.