sockets - Download a URL in C++

Question

I want to be able to download a URL in C++. Something as simple as:

std::string s;
s=download("http://www.example.com/myfile.html");

Ideally, this would include URLs like:

• ftp://example.com/myfile.dat
• file:///usr/home/myfile.dat
• https://example.com/myfile.html

I was using asio in Boost, but it didn't really seem to have the code for handling protocols like ftp and https. Now I discovered QT has more what I need (http://doc.trolltech.com/2.3/network.html).

It's tempting to make the switch to Qt, but it seems a bit heavy and intersects a lot of Boost functionality. Is it worth learning yet another API (Qt) or can Boost do more than I think?

Answer 1

Not a direct answer, but you might like to consider libCURL, which is almost exactly what you describe.

There are sample applications here, and in particular this demonstrates how simple usage can be.