Using WinInet as an alternative to libcurl

Instead of fighting with libcurl you could just use WinInet for your http needs if you are married to the Windows platform.

A quick example follows, great article, and as usual pretty difficult to navigate msdn docs

#include <windows.h>
#include <wininet.h>

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#pragma comment ( lib, "Wininet.lib" )

int main()
{
  HINTERNET hInternet = InternetOpenA("InetURL/1.0", INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_PRECONFIG, NULL, NULL, 0 );

  HINTERNET hConnection = InternetConnectA( hInternet, "you.appspot.com", 80, " "," ", INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP, 0, 0 );

  HINTERNET hData = HttpOpenRequestA( hConnection, "GET", "/", NULL, NULL, NULL, INTERNET_FLAG_KEEP_CONNECTION, 0 );

  char buf[ 2048 ] ;

  HttpSendRequestA( hData, NULL, 0, NULL, 0 ) ;

  DWORD bytesRead = 0 ;
  DWORD totalBytesRead = 0 ;
  // http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa385103(VS.85).aspx
  // To ensure all data is retrieved, an application must continue to call the
  // InternetReadFile function until the function returns TRUE and the
  // lpdwNumberOfBytesRead parameter equals zero. 
  while( InternetReadFile( hData, buf, 2000, &bytesRead ) && bytesRead != 0 )
  {
    buf[ bytesRead ] = 0 ; // insert the null terminator.

    puts( buf ) ;          // print it to the screen.
    
    printf( "%d bytes read\n", bytesRead ) ;

    totalBytesRead += bytesRead ;
  }

  printf( "\n\n END -- %d bytes read\n", bytesRead ) ;
  printf( "\n\n END -- %d TOTAL bytes read\n", totalBytesRead ) ;

  InternetCloseHandle( hData ) ;
  InternetCloseHandle( hConnection ) ;
  InternetCloseHandle( hInternet ) ;
  
}