Other HTTP/FTP client Libraries for C/C++
Free and Open Source Software projects have a long tradition of forks and duplicate efforts. We enjoy "doing it ourselves", no matter if someone else has done something very similar already.
Alternative libraries that cover parts of libcurl's features, in A-Z order:
Beast (Boost)
- Beast is a C++ header-only library serving as a foundation for writing interoperable networking libraries by providing low-level HTTP/1, WebSocket, and networking protocol vocabulary types and algorithms using the consistent asynchronous model of Boost.Asio.
- C++ Requests: Curl for People, a spiritual port of Python Requests. (based on libcurl)
- A C++ library for "easy FTP client functionality. It features resuming of up- and downloads, FXP support, SSL/TLS encryption, and logging functionality."
- Has a URLStream class. This C++ class allow you to download a file using HTTP. See demo/urlfetch.cpp in commoncpp2-1.3.19.tar.gz
- Does HTTP and FTP transfers (both ways), supports file: URLs, and an API for URL parsing. The utility fetch that is built on libfetch is an integral part of the FreeBSD operating system.
- (Not used anymore) More complex and harder to use than libcurl is. Includes everything from multi-threading to HTML parsing. The most notable transfer-related feature that libcurl does not offer but libwww does, is caching.
- Part of glib (GNOME).
- An HTTP and WebDAV client library, with a C interface. I have mainly heard and seen people use this with WebDAV as their main interest. This is one of the two alternatives used by the Subversion project.
- a collection of open source C++ class libraries that simplify and accelerate the development of network-centric, portable applications in C++.
- The Qt Network module offers classes that allow you to write TCP/IP clients and servers, including "High Level" network operations for HTTP and FTP.
- "The serf library is a C-based HTTP client library built upon the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) library. It multiplexes connections, running the read/write communication asynchronously." This is one of the two alternatives used by the Subversion project.
- While not a library at all, I have been told that people sometimes extract the network code from it and base their own hacks from there.
- "The Windows Internet (WinINet) application programming interface (API) enables applications to interact with Gopher, FTP, and HTTP protocols to access Internet resources."
- (Windows) Provides client-side protocol support for communication with HTTP servers. A client computer can use the XMLHTTP object to send an arbitrary HTTP request, receive the response, and have the Microsoft® XML Document Object Model (DOM) parse that response.
Have you tried programming with one of the other libs and care share your experiences? We'd love to make this collection more complete and feature lengthier comments about each lib.