08-13 09:19 阅读 67

关注

Classes for Writing HTTP Clients in C++ CodeProject

Classes for Writing HTTP Clients in C++ - CodeProject

Classes for Writing HTTP Clients in C++

By AnOldGreenHorn |
2 Jan 2009

| Article

VC6MFCDevIntermediate

Wrapper classes for Win32 HTTP calls, URL encoding, etc.See Also

• More like this

• More by this author

Article

Browse Code

Stats

Revisions (2)

Alternatives

4.36 (18 votes)

1

2

3

4

5

4.36/5 - 18 votes2 removedμ 4.00, σ_a 2.39 [?] 

Discuss this article

38

• Download demo project - 8.71 KB

• Download source - 2.9 KB

Introduction

Today, more and more developers want to write distributed transactional applications for the enterprise and leverage the speed, security, and reliability of server-side technology. Java has become the choice of thousands of developers for writing scalable programs (usually as servlets or JSP) that reside on web servers and execute business methods for clients. (We won't be talking about EJBs here !!)

These clients are usually HTML forms or Java applets that run within a web browser. What if your legacy C++ application wants to go thin, and hand-over all hard jobs like running business logic, accessing database, etc. to a Java servlet? How are you going to handle communication over HTTP, URL encoding variables and all that? The classes we are going to discuss in this article will show you how easy it is to write HTTP clients in C++, even easier than writing a Java Applet for the same purpose!! You take my word for that.

Background

You must be familiar with OOPs, internet protocols, etc. If you have developed a web application using Java, ASP or some other server side technology, then you will find this article easy to follow. To run the demo code, you must have access to a web server that supports Java, I have used Tomcat. If your web server does not support Java, write the server-script in whatever language your web server can interpret and change the server-script's name in the demo code.

Using the Code

This section is actually a walkthrough of the demo project.

First make the following includestatements in the CPP file that uses our HTTP classes:

 Collapse | Copy Code

// some standard headers #include <string> #include <vector> #include <iostream> using namespace std; // windows headers #include <windows.h> #include <wininet.h> // our header #include "web.h" using namespace openutils;

The program must also be linked with wininet.lib. In VC++ you can do this by going to Project-> Settings-> Link-> Object/Library Modules and adding wininet.lib to the end of the default library names.

Next, we declare an object of the WebFormclass.

 Collapse | Copy Code

WebForm wf;

You should tell WebFormthe name of the web server that it should connect to:

 Collapse | Copy Code

wf.setHost("http://localhost:8080");

You can replace "localhost:8080" with any valid HTTP URL like:

 Collapse | Copy Code

"www.codeproject.com" or "208.45.33.44"

The next parameter that WebFormexpects is the name of the script file that the web server should execute:

 Collapse | Copy Code

wf.setScriptFile("/banking/servlet/InterestServlet");

Please check out your web server's documentation for the path of your servlet files. On a Tomcat server, create the folder hierarchy "banking\WEB-INF\classes" in the "webapps" sub-folder and place the IntersetServlet.class file in that.

Now you are ready to add variables to be sent to the servlet for processing. The InterestServlet expects three variables or parameters: name, rateand amt. These variables and their values can be added to the WebFormobject by calling the putVariable()function.

 Collapse | Copy Code

wf.putVariable("name","James Dean"); wf.putVariable("rate","14"); wf.putVariable("amt","1200.89");

We can send an HTTP request to the servlet by calling the sendRequest() function.

 Collapse | Copy Code

wf.sendRequest();

The servlet will send back a response that will contain the calculated interest rate in HTML format. This response can be read into a buffer on the client side:

 Collapse | Copy Code

char response[101]; if(wf.getResponse(response,100)) {     cout << endl << response << endl; }

We can also use the WebFormclass to write simple clients that act like a web-browser. Here is a code snippet that downloads the home page of a well-known web site:

 Collapse | Copy Code

wf.setHost(http://www.microsoft.com); wf.setScriptFile("/default.html"); // or wf.setScriptFile(""); wf.sendRequest(); char buff[10 * 1024]; if(wf.getResponse(buff,sizeof(buff))) {     cout << buff << endl; } else {     cout << "No response from server" << endl; }

Notes

web.h defines a utility class for encoding a stringin the HTTP encoding format. This class is used internally by WebForm. The usage of this class and the decoder class is demonstrated below:

 Collapse | Copy Code

string str = "AC-0099"; string str_enc = URLEncoder::encode(str); // AC%2d0099 string dec = URLDecoder::decode(str_enc); // AC-0099

Please remember to enclose all web.h function calls in a try-catchblock that catch WebFormExceptions.

 Collapse | Copy Code

try {// web.h calls } catch(WebFormException ex) {   cout << ex.getMessage(); }

Before running the demo, copy InterestServlet.class from the servlet folder to the appropriate script folder of your Java enabled web-server.

History

• 10/20/2003: Submitted to CodeProject

• 12/30/2008: Updated source and demo project

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The BSD License