I need to read the contents of a web page from a C program.  The
program will be on the same system as the apache server.  The specific
page to be read is the apache status page displayed by
http://your.server.name/server-status.  I don't want to bring up a
browser to get to this page to read it from a program.  Instead, is
there a way for a program to request an html page directly and then
read its contents?

The answer I am looking for are pointers to web sites that easily
explain how to do what I want to do.  Any verbage you add about the
general approach is appreciated also.

Though I prefer someone to answer this who knows apache, I suspect the
answer is general enough for a web knowledgable person to answer.

Hi kentmm,

Your program can do this by opening a TCP/IP connection to the web
server on the same system and communicating with the web server using
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), just the same as a browser would.

You should be able to identify the host with the standard loopback IP
address 127.0.0.1, for example, "http://127.0.0.1/server-status".  The
host name "localhost" may also work.

You don't have to develop software to communicate in HTTP or deal with
TCP/IP or sockets.  You can get an HTTP client library that makes it
relatively easy.  Your program can give the library a URI and it will
give back a web page (or perhaps an error code).

libcurl is a well-known HTTP client library for C.  The web site
includes a tutorial and examples.

libcurl home page
http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/

libcurl tutorial
http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/libcurl-tutorial.html

libcurl examples
http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/example.html

The makers of libcurl maintain a page listing other HTTP and FTP
client libraries.  All are free, but not all are for C.  I looked at
some of these and they did not look as well-documented as libcurl.

http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/competitors.html

libcurl works on many platforms, but other HTTP client libraries I
found were mostly platform-specific.  You didn't specify your
operating system, so I can't tell which of these you might be able to
use.


Additional Links

Wikipedia on Loopback
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loopback


I hope this is a satisfactory answer to your question.  If you need
any more information about this, please ask for a clarification and I
will do my best to help.

--efn

Thank you.  The answer was very informative