Hi there.
In my understanding, you want a C++ program that will retrieve the data that a web-browser would if you went to the url of your page.
It's reasonably simple, but far from trivial. There's a whole bunch of code around that deals with downloading a file using c/c++ (that's what you're doing - downloading it.) on the web. It's just not a file that exists on disk - no different to pretty much any forum page you care to visit-they're all dynamically generated too.
Here's some code that will download this page into memory, save it to disk and print it to screen. Modify to suit your needs, link to ws2_32.lib
#include <windows.h>
#include <string>
#include <stdio.h>
using std::string;
HINSTANCE hInst;
WSADATA wsaData;
void mParseUrl(char *mUrl, string &serverName, string &filepath, string &filename)
{
string::size_type n;
string url = mUrl;
if (url.substr(0,7) == "http://")
url.erase(0,7);
if (url.substr(0,8) == "https://")
url.erase(0,8);
n = url.find('/');
if (n != string::npos)
{
serverName = url.substr(0,n);
filepath = url.substr(n);
n = filepath.rfind('/');
filename = filepath.substr(n+1);
}
else
{
serverName = url;
filepath = "/";
filename = "";
}
}
SOCKET connectToServer(char *szServerName, WORD portNum)
{
struct hostent *hp;
unsigned int addr;
struct sockaddr_in server;
SOCKET conn;
conn = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
if (conn == INVALID_SOCKET)
return NULL;
if(inet_addr(szServerName)==INADDR_NONE)
{
hp=gethostbyname(szServerName);
}
else
{
addr=inet_addr(szServerName);
hp=gethostbyaddr((char*)&addr,sizeof(addr),AF_INET);
}
if(hp==NULL)
{
closesocket(conn);
return NULL;
}
server.sin_addr.s_addr=*((unsigned long*)hp->h_addr);
server.sin_family=AF_INET;
server.sin_port=htons(portNum);
if(connect(conn,(struct sockaddr*)&server,sizeof(server)))
{
closesocket(conn);
return NULL;
}
return conn;
}
int getHeaderLength(char *content)
{
const char *srchStr1 = "\r\n\r\n", *srchStr2 = "\n\r\n\r";
char *findPos;
int ofset = -1;
findPos = strstr(content, srchStr1);
if (findPos != NULL)
{
ofset = findPos - content;
ofset += strlen(srchStr1);
}
else
{
findPos = strstr(content, srchStr2);
if (findPos != NULL)
{
ofset = findPos - content;
ofset += strlen(srchStr2);
}
}
return ofset;
}
char *readUrl2(char *szUrl, long &bytesReturnedOut, char **headerOut)
{
const int bufSize = 512;
char readBuffer[bufSize], sendBuffer[bufSize], tmpBuffer[bufSize];
char *tmpResult=NULL, *result;
SOCKET conn;
string server, filepath, filename;
long totalBytesRead, thisReadSize, headerLen;
mParseUrl(szUrl, server, filepath, filename);
conn = connectToServer((char*)server.c_str(), 80);
sprintf(tmpBuffer, "GET %s HTTP/1.0", filepath.c_str());
strcpy(sendBuffer, tmpBuffer);
strcat(sendBuffer, "\r\n");
sprintf(tmpBuffer, "Host: %s", server.c_str());
strcat(sendBuffer, tmpBuffer);
strcat(sendBuffer, "\r\n");
strcat(sendBuffer, "\r\n");
send(conn, sendBuffer, strlen(sendBuffer), 0);
printf("Buffer being sent:\n%s", sendBuffer);
totalBytesRead = 0;
while(1)
{
memset(readBuffer, 0, bufSize);
thisReadSize = recv (conn, readBuffer, bufSize, 0);
if ( thisReadSize <= 0 )
break;
tmpResult = (char*)realloc(tmpResult, thisReadSize+totalBytesRead);
memcpy(tmpResult+totalBytesRead, readBuffer, thisReadSize);
totalBytesRead += thisReadSize;
}
headerLen = getHeaderLength(tmpResult);
long contenLen = totalBytesRead-headerLen;
result = new char[contenLen+1];
memcpy(result, tmpResult+headerLen, contenLen);
result[contenLen] = 0x0;
char *myTmp;
myTmp = new char[headerLen+1];
strncpy(myTmp, tmpResult, headerLen);
myTmp[headerLen] = NULL;
delete(tmpResult);
*headerOut = myTmp;
bytesReturnedOut = contenLen;
closesocket(conn);
return(result);
}
int main()
{
const int bufLen = 1024;
char *szUrl = "http://www.codeproject.com/Questions/427350/calling-a-website-from-cplusplus";
long fileSize;
char *memBuffer, *headerBuffer;
FILE *fp;
memBuffer = headerBuffer = NULL;
if ( WSAStartup(0x101, &wsaData) != 0)
return -1;
memBuffer = readUrl2(szUrl, fileSize, &headerBuffer);
printf("returned from readUrl\n");
printf("data returned:\n%s", memBuffer);
if (fileSize != 0)
{
printf("Got some data\n");
fp = fopen("downloaded.file", "wb");
fwrite(memBuffer, 1, fileSize, fp);
fclose(fp);
delete(memBuffer);
delete(headerBuffer);
}
WSACleanup();
return 0;
}