How do I open a URL from C

Question

how can I open a URL from my C   program   In ruby you can do    x open https   google com    What s the equivalent in C    I wonder if there s a platform-independent solution  But if there isn t  I d like the Unix Mac better     Here s my code    include  lt stdio h gt   include  lt string h gt   include  lt fstream gt   int main  int argc  char  argv          char url 1000     https   www google com        std  fstream fs      fs open url       fs close         return 0

User · Answer

I ve had MUCH better luck using ShellExecuteA    I ve heard that there are a lot of security risks when you use  system     This is what I came up with for my own code   void SearchWeb  string word             string base URL    http   www bing com search q        string search URL    dummy       search URL   base URL   word       cout  lt  lt   Searching for       lt  lt  word  lt  lt      n        ShellExecuteA NULL   open   search URL c str    NULL  NULL  SW SHOWNORMAL       p s  Its using WinAPI if i m correct  So its not multiplatform solution

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C isn t as high-level as the scripting language you mention  But if you want to stay away from socket-based programming  try Curl  Curl is a great C library and has many features  I have used it for years and always recommend it  It also includes some stand alone programs for testing or shell use

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For linux environments  you can use xdg-open  It is installed by default on most distributions  The benefit over the accepted answer is that it opens the user s preferred browser     xdg-open https   google com   xdg-open steam   run 10   Of course you can wrap this in a system   call

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Create a function and copy the code using winsock which is mentioned already by Software Developer   For Instance    ifdef  WIN32     this is required only for windows  if  WSAStartup MAKEWORD 2 2    amp wsaData     0                  endif   winsock code here   ifdef  WIN32  WSACleanup      endif

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Here s an example in windows code using winsock    include  lt winsock2 h gt   include  lt windows h gt   include  lt iostream gt   include  lt string gt   include  lt locale gt   pragma comment lib  ws2 32 lib   using namespace std   string website HTML  locale local    void get Website char  url     int main            open website     get Website  www google com            format website HTML     for  size t i 0  i lt website HTML length      i           website HTML i   tolower website HTML i  local          display HTML     cout  lt  lt website HTML       cout lt  lt   n n          return 0                                     void get Website char  url         WSADATA wsaData      SOCKET Socket      SOCKADDR IN SockAddr        int lineCount 0      int rowCount 0       struct hostent  host      char  get http  new char 256            memset get http      sizeof get http             strcpy get http  GET   HTTP 1 1 r nHost              strcat get http url           strcat get http   r nConnection  close r n r n             if  WSAStartup MAKEWORD 2 2    amp wsaData     0                         cout  lt  lt   WSAStartup failed  n               system  pause                  return 1                     Socket socket AF INET SOCK STREAM IPPROTO TCP           host   gethostbyname url            SockAddr sin port htons 80           SockAddr sin family AF INET          SockAddr sin addr s addr      unsigned long  host- gt h addr            cout  lt  lt   Connecting to   lt  lt  url lt  lt       n            if connect Socket  SOCKADDR    amp SockAddr  sizeof SockAddr      0                        cout  lt  lt   Could not connect               system  pause                  return 1                     cout  lt  lt   Connected  n                send Socket get http  strlen get http  0             char buffer 10000            int nDataLength              while   nDataLength   recv Socket buffer 10000 0    gt  0                                       int i   0                   while  buffer i   gt   32    buffer i       n     buffer i       r                                                              website HTML  buffer i                                            i    1                                                         closesocket Socket           WSACleanup                 delete   get http

User · Answer

There re already answers for windows  In linux  I noticed open https   www google com always launch browser from shell  so you can try   system  open https   your domain uri      that s say  system   open  s   url  c str        c     https   linux die net man 1 open

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Use libcurl  here is a simple example   EDIT  If this is about starting a web browser from C    you can invoke a shell command with system on a POSIX system   system   lt mybrowser gt  http   google com      By replacing  lt mybrowser gt  with the browser you want to launch

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Your question may mean two different things   1   Open a web page with a browser    include  lt windows h gt   include  lt shellapi h gt      ShellExecute 0  0  L http   www google com   0  0   SW SHOW      This should work  it opens the file with the associated program  Should open the browser  which is usually the default web browser     2   Get the code of a webpage and you will render it yourself or do some other thing  For this I recommend to read this or and this     I hope it s at least a little helpful   EDIT  Did not notice  what you are asking for UNIX  this only work on Windows

User · Answer

I was having the exact same problem in Windows   I noticed that in OP s gist  he uses string  open    in line 21  however  by using it one comes across this error       open  is not recognized as an internal or external command   After researching  I have found that open is MacOS the default command to open things  It is different on Windows or Linux   Linux  xdg-open  lt URL gt   Windows  start  lt URL gt     For those of you that are using Windows  as I am  you can use the following   std  string op   std  string  start    append url   system op c str

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