Reading information off the web?

[Brian Schamel]

I am building a program that will read from a particular web page. I have written it so that it will parse the page correctly, but I can only do it for a downloaded page right now. I would like for it to work simply with the URL.

I have seen things about "screen scraping", though I don't quite understand what it does - I think it's more for just parsing it, which I can already do.

If it is possible to automatically download that file, that is fine as well.

If it matters at all, the pages I am reading from are stories on Fanfiction.net.

[andywestken]

Are you looking for this kind of thing?

How to download an http file?
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/47582/

the code in this threads uses cURL : http://curl.haxx.se/ If you search this site -- and the web -- for (e.g.) curl_easy_init you'll find other examples and info about cURL's easy API.

cURL is definitely worth considering, but there are other libraries available, as listed here: Other HTTP/FTP client Libraries
http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/competitors.html

which, if you're using Windows, include WinInet:

Using Wininet
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/75062/

Andy