[html] How do I open a URL from C++?

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 <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <fstream>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char url[1000] = "https://www.google.com";

    std::fstream fs;
    fs.open(url);
    fs.close();

    return 0;
}

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 << "Searching for: \"" << word << "\"\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.

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.

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.

Your question may mean two different things:

1.) Open a web page with a browser.

#include <windows.h>
#include <shellapi.h>
...
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.

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 <URL>

Windows: start <URL>

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());

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

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), &wsaData) != 0)
{

  //...

}

#endif

winsock code here

#ifdef _WIN32

WSACleanup();

#endif

Here's an example in windows code using winsock.

#include <winsock2.h>
#include <windows.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#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<website_HTML.length(); ++i) 
        website_HTML[i]= tolower(website_HTML[i],local);

    //display HTML
    cout <<website_HTML;

    cout<<"\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), &wsaData) != 0) 
        {
            cout << "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->h_addr);

        cout << "Connecting to "<< url<<" ...\n";

        if(connect(Socket,(SOCKADDR*)(&SockAddr),sizeof(SockAddr)) != 0)
        {
            cout << "Could not connect";
            system("pause");
            //return 1;
        }

        cout << "Connected.\n";     
        send(Socket,get_http, strlen(get_http),0 );

        char buffer[10000];

        int nDataLength;
            while ((nDataLength = recv(Socket,buffer,10000,0)) > 0)
            {       
                int i = 0;

                while (buffer[i] >= 32 || buffer[i] == '\n' || buffer[i] == '\r') 
                {                    
                    website_HTML+=buffer[i];                     
                    i += 1;
                }               
            }
        closesocket(Socket);
        WSACleanup();

            delete[] get_http;
}