How difficult would this be - download and read file

Hi,

Just to set the scene, currently a CSV file is stored in the same directory as the exe file. When the file is executed it reads the values from the CSV file and displays them.

How difficult would it be to instead go to a webaddress for the csv file. An example is to download the csv file from www.xxx.com/file.csv, and then read from it in the same way as the previous program. Im assuming this is all possible. If it isnt too hard, can someone please point me in the direction of a function that will make it possible.

Using libcurl would probably be the easiest way.

Are there no functions in defalt C to do this without having to use a library like the one you suggested?

Nothing in standard C. In fact, standard C doesn't even have the capability to open a socket, let alone download a file over the HTTP protocol.

Remember, in order to do this you have to go through the web server that your browser would connect to. There is no other way (in any language). So, to give you an idea of how hard this is, consider the steps

1. set up an internet domain socket
2. attempt to connect to the domain server
3. send a GET request for the file
4. parse the contents of the HTTP reply from the server
5. turn the data extracted from the reply back into a file

It is more than a hundred lines of code, however you cut it. Network packets are layered and require work to dissemble and understand.