Download file using libcurl in C/C++

Question

Hi! I am building an application (on windows using Dev-C++) and I want it to download a file. I am doing this using libcurl (I have already installed the source code using packman). I found a working example (http://siddhantahuja.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/how-to-download-a-file-from-a-url-and-save-onto-local-directory-in-c-using-libcurl/) but it doesn't close the file after download is complete. I would like someone to give an example on how to download a file, either in c or c++. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Go to the libcurl project site- it includes examples simple http

#include <stdio.h>
#include <curl/curl.h>

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

  curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "curl.haxx.se");
    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);

    /* always cleanup */ 
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
  return 0;
}

or better in C++ see curlpp

Answer 2

The example you are using is wrong. See the man page for easy_setopt. In the example write_data uses its own FILE, *outfile, and not the fp that was specified in CURLOPT_WRITEDATA. That's why closing fp causes problems - it's not even opened.

This is more or less what it should look like (no libcurl available here to test)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <curl/curl.h>
#include <curl/types.h>
#include <curl/easy.h>
#include <string>

size_t write_data(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, FILE *stream) {
    written = fwrite(ptr, size, nmemb, stream);
    return written;
}

int main(void) {
    CURL *curl;
    FILE *fp;
    CURLcode res;
    char *url = "http://localhost/aaa.txt";
    char outfilename[FILENAME_MAX] = "C:\\bbb.txt";
    curl = curl_easy_init();
    if (curl) {
        fp = fopen(outfilename,"wb");
        curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://localhost/aaa.txt");
        curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, write_data);
        curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, fp);
        res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
        /* always cleanup */
        curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
        fclose(fp);
    }
    return 0;
}

Answer 3

OK, It finally worked. Thanks for your answers. Here is the working code (based on fvu's sample code):

#define CURL_STATICLIB
#include <stdio.h>
#include <curl/curl.h>
#include <curl/types.h>
#include <curl/easy.h>
#include <string>

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(void) {
    CURL *curl;
    FILE *fp;
    CURLcode res;
    char *url = "http://localhost/aaa.txt";
    char outfilename[FILENAME_MAX] = "C:\\bbb.txt";
    curl = curl_easy_init();
    if (curl) {
        fp = fopen(outfilename,"wb");
        curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, url);
        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);
    }
    return 0;
}