C++ HTTP client library using libcurl as its backend.

Requirements

C++23 compiler and standard library
libcurl 8.13.0 or newer
nlohmann/json 3.11.3 or newer
Exception support

Building the unit tests additionally requires:

cpp-httplib 0.17.0 or newer
pkg-config

Usage

Send a JSON document and parse the JSON response:

kaycxx::http::client http_client{};
const auto response = http_client.post("https://example.com/echo", nlohmann::json{
    { "message", "Hello" }
});
const auto message = response.json().at("message").get<std::string>();

The guides below cover request bodies, streaming, headers, options, responses, and errors in detail.

CMake users consume the installed package with:

find_package(kaycxx-http 0.2.0 CONFIG REQUIRED)

target_link_libraries(my-target PRIVATE kaycxx::http)

Non-CMake users can use pkg-config:

c++ -std=c++23 $(pkg-config --cflags kaycxx-http) -c main.cpp

c++ main.o $(pkg-config --libs kaycxx-http)

Guides

Sending Requests explains client reuse, convenience methods, custom methods, and supported URLs.
Request Bodies explains text, JSON, binary, streamed, and form request bodies together with their ownership rules.
Responses and Errors explains buffered responses, JSON parsing, status handling, and the exception model.
Streaming explains streamed downloads, streamed uploads, bidirectional streaming, and error responses.
Headers and Options explains request and response headers, redirects, timeouts, and response buffer limits.

Build From Source

cmake -B build

cmake --build build

A shared library is built by default. For a static build:

cmake -B build -D BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF

cmake --build build

Install

cmake --install build --prefix /tmp/root

If no prefix is specified, CMake installs to /usr/local by default on Unix systems.

Development

Run all tests:

cmake --build build --target test

Generate API documentation with Doxygen:

cmake --build build --target apidoc

The generated HTML documentation is written to build/apidoc/html/index.html.