C++ Requests: Curl for People

Announcements

• This project is being maintained by Fabian Sauter and Kilian Traub.
• For quick help, and discussion libcpr also offers a gitter chat.

Supported Releases

Release	Min. C++ Standard	Status	Notes
master	cpp17
1.14.x	cpp17
1.10.x - 1.13.x	cpp17
<= 1.9.x	cpp11

TLDR

C++ Requests is a simple wrapper around libcurl inspired by the excellent Python Requests project.

Despite its name, libcurl's easy interface is far from simple, and errors and frustration often arise from mistakes or misuse. By leveraging the more expressive features of C++17 (or C++11 if using cpr <`= 1.9.x), this library distills the process of making network calls into a few clear and concise idioms.

Here's a quick GET request:

#include <cpr/cpr.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    cpr::Response r = cpr::Get(cpr::Url{"https://api.github.com/repos/whoshuu/cpr/contributors"},
                      cpr::Authentication{"user", "pass", cpr::AuthMode::BASIC},
                      cpr::Parameters{{"anon", "true"}, {"key", "value"}});
    r.status_code;                  // 200
    r.header["content-type"];       // application/json; charset=utf-8
    r.text;                         // JSON text string
    return 0;
}

And here's less functional, more complicated code, without cpr.

Documentation

You can find the latest documentation here. The same content is maintained in the libcpr/docs repository if you need an offline copy or want to build the docs locally. It's a work in progress, but it should give you a better idea of how to use the library than the tests currently do.

Features

C++ Requests currently supports:

• Custom headers
• URL-encoded parameters
• URL-encoded POST values
• Multipart form POST upload
• File POST upload
• Basic authentication
• Bearer authentication
• Digest authentication
• NTLM authentication
• Connection and request timeout specification
• Timeout for low speed connection
• Asynchronous requests
• :cookie: support!
• Proxy support
• Callback interfaces
• PUT methods
• DELETE methods
• HEAD methods
• OPTIONS methods
• PATCH methods
• Thread Safe access to libCurl
• OpenSSL and WinSSL support for HTTPS requests
• Server Sent Events (SSE) handling

Planned

For a quick overview about the planned features, have a look at the next Milestones.

Usage

CMake

fetch_content:

If you already have a CMake project you need to integrate C++ Requests with, the primary way is to use fetch_content. Add the following to your CMakeLists.txt.

include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(cpr GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/libcpr/cpr.git
                         GIT_TAG f091b2c061b307ee89b164c39976fc9202a1c79d.12.0) # Replace with your desired git commit from: https://github.com/libcpr/cpr/releases
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(cpr)

This will produce the target cpr::cpr which you can link against the typical way:

target_link_libraries(your_target_name PRIVATE cpr::cpr)

That should do it! There's no need to handle libcurl yourself. All dependencies are taken care of for you. All of this can be found in an example here.

find_package():

If you prefer not to use fetch_content, you can download, build, and install the library and then use CMake find_package() function to integrate it into a project.

Note: this feature is feasible only if CPR_USE_SYSTEM_CURL is set. (see #645)

git clone https://github.com/libcpr/cpr.git
cd cpr && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCPR_USE_SYSTEM_CURL=ON
cmake --build . --parallel
sudo cmake --install .

Build Static Library

As an alternative if you want to switch between a static or shared version of cpr use '-DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON/OFF'.

git clone https://github.com/libcpr/cpr.git
cd cpr && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCPR_USE_SYSTEM_CURL=ON -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF
cmake --build . --parallel
sudo cmake --install .

In your CMakeLists.txt:

find_package(cpr REQUIRED)
add_executable(your_target_name your_target_name.cpp)
target_link_libraries(your_target_name PRIVATE cpr::cpr)

Tests

cpr provides a bunch of tests that can be executed via the following commands.

git clone https://github.com/libcpr/cpr.git
cd cpr && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCPR_BUILD_TESTS=ON # There are other test related options like 'CPR_BUILD_TESTS_SSL' and 'CPR_BUILD_TESTS_PROXY'
cmake --build . --parallel
ctest -VV # -VV is optional since it enables verbose output

Bazel

cpr is available as a module from the Bazel Central Registry. Please refer to the module page on how to use it within your project.

Packages for Linux Distributions

Alternatively, you may install a package specific to your Linux distribution. Since so few distributions currently have a package for cpr, most users will not be able to run your program with this approach.

Currently, we are aware of packages for the following distributions:

• Arch Linux (AUR)
• Fedora Linux

If there's no package for your distribution, try making one! If you do, and it is added to your distribution's repositories, please submit a pull request to add it to the list above. However, please only do this if you plan to actively maintain the package.

NuGet Package

For Windows, there is also a libcpr NuGet package available. Currently, x86 and x64 builds are supported with release and debug configuration.

The package can be found here: NuGet.org

Port for macOS

On macOS you may install cpr via MacPorts.org (arm64, x86_64, powerpc)

FreeBSD Port

On FreeBSD, you can issue pkg install cpr or use the Ports tree to install it.

Requirements

The only explicit requirements are:

• A C++17 compatible compiler such as Clang or GCC. The minimum required version of GCC is unknown, so if anyone has trouble building this library with a specific version of GCC, do let us know.
• In case you only have a C++11 compatible compiler available, all versions below cpr 1.9.x are for you. The 1.10.0 release of cpr switches to C++17 as a requirement.
• If you would like to perform https requests OpenSSL and its development libraries are required.
• If you do not use the built-in version of curl but instead use your systems version, make sure you use a version >= 7.71.0. Lower versions are not supported. This means you need Debian >= 11 or Ubuntu >= 22.04 LTS.
• The Meson Build System is required build PSL from source (PSL support for curl). For more information take a look at the CPR_CURL_USE_LIBPSL and CPR_USE_SYSTEM_LIB_PSL CMake options.

Building cpr - Using vcpkg

You can download and install cpr using the vcpkg dependency manager:

git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
./vcpkg integrate install
./vcpkg install cpr

The cpr port in vcpkg is kept up to date by Microsoft team members and community contributors. If the version is out of date, please create an issue or pull request on the vcpkg repository.

Building cpr - Using Conan

You can download and install cpr using the Conan package manager. Setup your CMakeLists.txt (see Conan documentation on how to use MSBuild, Meson and others). An example can be found here.

The cpr package in Conan is kept up to date by Conan contributors. If the version is out of date, please create an issue or pull request on the conan-center-index repository.