InternetOpenUrl error 87 - c++

Question

I call InternetOpenUrl in 2 other places in my program and it works flawlessly. But the last time I call it, it fails with error 87 (the parameter is incorrect). It's odd because the parameters are exactly the same except the url.
This is my code:
wchar_t url[] = {'h','t','t','p','s',':','/','/','w','w','w','.','e','x','a','m','p','l','e','.','c','o','m', 0};
HINTERNET hFile = NULL;
hOpen = InternetOpenW(L"MyAgent", NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);
if (!hOpen)
ret = EXIT_FAILURE;
DWORD dwRequestFlags =
INTERNET_FLAG_NO_UI
| INTERNET_FLAG_NO_AUTH
| INTERNET_FLAG_PRAGMA_NOCACHE
| INTERNET_FLAG_NO_CACHE_WRITE;
hFile = InternetOpenUrlW(hOpen, url, NULL, NULL, dwRequestFlags, NULL);
Then I use GetLastError() to find out it's 87.

Answer 1

You are calling InternetOpenUrl() even if InternetOpen() fails, so hOpen would be invalid. Do something like this instead:
hOpen = InternetOpenW(L"MyAgent", NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);
if (!hOpen)
ret = EXIT_FAILURE;
else
{
DWORD dwRequestFlags =
INTERNET_FLAG_NO_UI
| INTERNET_FLAG_NO_AUTH
| INTERNET_FLAG_PRAGMA_NOCACHE
| INTERNET_FLAG_NO_CACHE_WRITE;
hFile = InternetOpenUrlW(hOpen, url, NULL, NULL, dwRequestFlags, NULL);
if (!hFile)
ret = EXIT_FAILURE;
else
// and so on...
}
Or:
ret = 0;
hOpen = InternetOpenW(L"MyAgent", NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);
if (!hOpen)
ret = EXIT_FAILURE;
if (ret == 0)
{
DWORD dwRequestFlags =
INTERNET_FLAG_NO_UI
| INTERNET_FLAG_NO_AUTH
| INTERNET_FLAG_PRAGMA_NOCACHE
| INTERNET_FLAG_NO_CACHE_WRITE;
hFile = InternetOpenUrlW(hOpen, url, NULL, NULL, dwRequestFlags, NULL);
if (!hFile)
ret = EXIT_FAILURE;
}
if (ret == 0)
{
// and so on...
}
Also, this line:
wchar_t url[] = {'h','t','t','p','s',':','/','/','w','w','w','.','e','x','a','m','p','l','e','.','c','o','m', 0};
Can be re-written like this instead:
wchar_t url[] = L"https://www.example.com";
Or even this (since there so no need to make a local copy of the literal data):
const wchar_t *url = L"https://www.example.com";