**[POSIX](
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) 7 minimal runnable example**
Let's fetch <http://example.com>.
wget.c
```
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 700
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <assert.h>
#include <netdb.h> /* getprotobyname */
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
char buffer[BUFSIZ];
enum CONSTEXPR { MAX_REQUEST_LEN = 1024};
char request[MAX_REQUEST_LEN];
char request_template[] = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: %s\r\n\r\n";
struct protoent *protoent;
char *hostname = "example.com";
in_addr_t in_addr;
int request_len;
int socket_file_descriptor;
ssize_t nbytes_total, nbytes_last;
struct hostent *hostent;
struct sockaddr_in sockaddr_in;
unsigned short server_port = 80;
if (argc > 1)
hostname = argv[1];
if (argc > 2)
server_port = strtoul(argv[2], NULL, 10);
request_len = snprintf(request, MAX_REQUEST_LEN, request_template, hostname);
if (request_len >= MAX_REQUEST_LEN) {
fprintf(stderr, "request length large: %d\n", request_len);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
/* Build the socket. */
protoent = getprotobyname("tcp");
if (protoent == NULL) {
perror("getprotobyname");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
socket_file_descriptor = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, protoent->p_proto);
if (socket_file_descriptor == -1) {
perror("socket");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
/* Build the address. */
hostent = gethostbyname(hostname);
if (hostent == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "error: gethostbyname(\"%s\")\n", hostname);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
in_addr = inet_addr(inet_ntoa(*(struct in_addr*)*(hostent->h_addr_list)));
if (in_addr == (in_addr_t)-1) {
fprintf(stderr, "error: inet_addr(\"%s\")\n", *(hostent->h_addr_list));
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
sockaddr_in.sin_addr.s_addr = in_addr;
sockaddr_in.sin_family = AF_INET;
sockaddr_in.sin_port = htons(server_port);
/* Actually connect. */
if (connect(socket_file_descriptor, (struct sockaddr*)&sockaddr_in, sizeof(sockaddr_in)) == -1) {
perror("connect");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
/* Send HTTP request. */
nbytes_total = 0;
while (nbytes_total < request_len) {
nbytes_last = write(socket_file_descriptor, request + nbytes_total, request_len - nbytes_total);
if (nbytes_last == -1) {
perror("write");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
nbytes_total += nbytes_last;
}
/* Read the response. */
fprintf(stderr, "debug: before first read\n");
while ((nbytes_total = read(socket_file_descriptor, buffer, BUFSIZ)) > 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "debug: after a read\n");
write(STDOUT_FILENO, buffer, nbytes_total);
}
fprintf(stderr, "debug: after last read\n");
if (nbytes_total == -1) {
perror("read");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
close(socket_file_descriptor);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
```
[GitHub upstream](
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).
Compile:
gcc -ggdb3 -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -o wget wget.c
Get
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and output to stdout:
./wget example.com
We see something like:
```
debug: before first read
debug: after a read
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Age: 540354
Cache-Control: max-age=604800
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2021 15:21:14 GMT
Etag: "3147526947+ident"
Expires: Tue, 09 Feb 2021 15:21:14 GMT
Last-Modified: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 07:18:26 GMT
Server: ECS (nyb/1D11)
Vary: Accept-Encoding
X-Cache: HIT
Content-Length: 1256
<!doctype html>
<html>
...
</html>
```
After printing the reply, this command hangs for most servers until timeout, and that is expected:
- either server or client must close the connection
- we (client) are not doing it
- most HTTP servers leave the connection open until a timeout expecting further requests, e.g. JavaScript, CSS and images following an HTML page
- we could parse the response, and close when Content-Length bytes are read, but we didn't for simplicity.
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says that if `Content-Length`
is not sent, the server can just close to determine length.
We could however make the host close by passing adding the HTTP 1.1 standard header [`Connection: close`](
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) to the server:
char request_template[] = "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: %s\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n";
The connection part also works with the IP:
host example.com
gives:
example.com has address 93.184.216.34
example.com has IPv6 address 2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946
and so we do:
./wget 93.184.216.34
however, the reply is an error, because we are not setting the `Host:` properly in our program, and that is [required in HTTP 1.1](
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).
Tested on Ubuntu 18.04.
**Why doesn't POSIX supply `wget`?**
It is a great shame, considering that all main capabilities are in place!
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**Server examples**
- minimal POSIX C example:
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- minimal Android Java example:
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]
