C++: `CHttpConnection` & `CInternetSession` OS X / LLVM Clang equivalent? - c++

I'm trying to translate some c++ code that was made using Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and compiles with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010+ so that it can be executed in Xcode. It's a class that makes a connection to an API, and so it uses the MFC classes CHttpConnection and CInternetSession. What's the closest equivalent for Mac/Xcode users? If context is needed, see the header file in the "How to connect through the API using C++" section on this page. Thanks in advance.

If you're on OSX then you're likely working with ObjC & Foundation. If so then the closest OSX equivalents would likely be NSURLConnection, NSURLRequest, and NSURLSession (as far as I know the api is the same for iOS and OSX). If you're not dealing with ObjC on OSX and/or you really need a C++ implementation of those MFC types, then you'll probably have to roll them yourself using sockets.
(Actually, there's nothing that prevents you from using libcurl or libwget - the C libs behind a couple of the examples from your link. At the very least they might save you some time.)

Related

c++ gui window cross platform

I would like to make c++ that will work both on Linux and windows as I understand if I use the win32 template in visual studio then it will only work on windows is there something built into c++ like java's jframe that I can use. Also I would like to use any external library at this time.
Here are some cross platform alternatives QT, wxWidgets, Ultimate++. I have used QT, it is intuitive with a huge collection of tools to use in your code. The others are also popular but I have never used them.
I make used of wxWidgets due to it's cross platform and even cross architecture, native look on the OS where it appear. Binary application yields by wxWidgets is small enough thus make it possible to linking statically as portable application. Qt produce huge binary if linked statically (and may be violate qt licensing scheme).
Another reason are licensing flexibly, well documentation and supported by huge community arround the world. wx is considered as mature framework since it first release about 20yrs ago. It's use standard C++ syntax and preprocessor that will make you easily switch from plain C or C++. Complete library are available ranging from appeal window GUI, string, network, stream, webview, xml, and wx is playing very well with 3rd party library as such database SOCI, Asio, etc ....
You may try start to code with wxWidgets easily using Eclipse-IDE and wxFormBuilder as GUI designer. Plese check my experience for ease setup it's IDE+Toolchain. This wx installer can be used do develop, test and run wx application on Linux desktop, and then deploy the binary on Raspberry Pi is available for another board target beside Linux x86_64.
http://yasriady.blogspot.co.id/2016/01/raspberry-pi-toolchain.html
There is a cross-platform application & UI development framework called Qt. I think it meets your requirements. Click here for more info.
There is a long list of both active and dead cross-platform C++ UI libraries here: https://philippegroarke.com/posts/2018/c++_ui_solutions/

Can a C++ program run on Mac OS?

I have watched a video in which one of the director of scs software (who makes a EURO TRUCK SIMULATOR game) saying that the game is written entirely in C++, yet the game runs on Windows and Mac OS as well. How could they achieve it? Is it possible to run a C++ program on MAC OS?
Yes.
...OK, stack overflow wants at least 30 characters. OS X comes with the C++ compiler clang++, which is built on top of llvm. In fact, Apple stopped supplying a port of gcc some time ago, so developers either have to build it themselves or adapt to clang. According to Wikipedia, Apple itself develops clang.
It is possible, either to run gcc in terminal or to use Xcode to compile it, however you cannot then use Cocoa but alternatives such as Qt are available for mac.
Sure, there are C++ compilers for Mac OS X as well. One is even included in xcode (the standard development environment on a Mac).
But that does not mean, that you can compile just any C++ program on a Mac. It has to be designed to use libraries, that are available on both platforms (instead of MFC on Windows or Cocoa on the Mac). This is possible for example by using wxwidgets or QT. With these two libraries it is even possible to compile the program for Unix platforms like Linux as well.
Regardless of language a multi-platform program relies on some basic support parts that are implemented differently on each platform. With pure standard C++ this is the standard library and the runtime support, but in practice a game, say, will also rely on 3rd party libraries with platform specific implementations. So given that the platform itself is compatible with the basic platform assumptions of the C++ language, and the Mac is, achieving such portability is conceptually very straightforward, although difficult to get perfect.
As an example of a platform that's not entirely compatible with C++, Microsoft's .NET virtual machine is apparently so at odds with the ideas of C++ that Microsoft has found it necessary to define two different non-standard variants of C++ for it, and offers no way to produce GUI programs for it in pure standard C++. It's not impossible to use only standard C++ for .NET, and indeed one main reason to use C++ with .NET is to combine standard C++ parts with more .NET-y parts; it's just that using only standard C++ the code becomes complex, inefficient and generally impractical. For example, my first questions here on SO concerned how to do a simple .NET message box in standard C++ by way of COM technology as an intermediate layer, and that worked, but with a ridiculous amount of complex non-general support code.
As another example, using C++ in web pages is very much an impedance mismatch, so to speak. Again Microsoft is the main player who has attempted this, with their ActiveX technology. It turned out to be a good way ensure that PCs all over the world got infested with malware, because C++ is not the kind of language where it's easy to constrain what the code can do. As far as I know only Microsoft's own Internet Explorer browser ever supported ActiveX in web pages. And as of Windows 10 the IE browser is being phased out and replaced by the newer Edge browser, that does not support ActiveX in web pages.

C++ Cross platform development (Windows and Mac OS)

I've got new task to research the way of development C++ cross platform (Mac/Win) utility for our internal needs.
I've developed for 7 years using different "pink" languages like C# , Java , Managed C++.
But in this task , the requirement is to support Mac , and .NET that is running on Mac , is really pain (Know this from other guys who did used this).
So I've started to think about C++ if it's possible to use C++ for Cross platform development.
The application will no contain any GUI , but will contain a lot of System API calls , and a lot of business logic analysis.
Is there possible some library allowing to achieve such kind of Task ?
Is it possible to do at all ?
Yes, you can write standard, ISO C++ and run the programs on both platforms.
When you need to implement some functionality using platform specific APIs (e.g. using Win32 on Windows and POSIX APIs on Mac OS) then what you do is write your own wrapper functions that abstract away the platform specific details, and then use that wrapper in the rest of your program.
Tools like CMake will allow you use Visual Studio to build the program on Windows and Xcode to build on the Mac without having to manually manage separate Visual Studio and Xcode project files.
If I understand your question properly, the only thing you need to develop cross platform c++ is to get the right compilers. You could use GCC on both platforms or even use 2 different project files for visual studio and xcode. That's up to you. Personally, I prefer GCC.
Regarding code itself, it depends on what you do with it. STD is available on both platforms (std::vector, std::string, etc) so code should compile properly on both platforms.
Edit: Btw, most platform specific stuff are available through open source code (like boost though I personally don't like boost that much). If needed, you could even look at other open source projects that are cross platform (ogre3d, etc).

Best alternative for Visual C++? VS11 Express can't be used to write desktop apps

Some of you might already know that Microsoft is trying to kill desktop development in favor of Metro style apps. The express editions of the new Visual Studio 11 will only support writing Metro style apps. They also won't give you the new compilers as part of the new Windows SDK. The only way to get the compilers is to buy Visual Studio Professional or higher.
Now it's time to find an alternative (alternative compilers for the Windows platform). Any suggestions?
Some links that are related to this issue:
http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2645679-visual-studio-11-express-on-windows-7-and-the-abil
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/05/18/a-look-ahead-at-the-visual-studio-11-product-lineup-and-platform-support.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/express
Gcc/G++ of course. In my opinion it is superior to VC++. In addition, you can use Eclipse CDT as IDE, it is quite usable at the moment (compared to older versions). I work like that on Windows. In addition, you can also work on Linux or MacOS without having to switch to another tool.
1) The Metro and WinRT features are accessible from C++/CX which in turn is built on top of COM, so according to this detailed discussion (SO question on WinRT and C) you can use the latest "Microsoft-only" features with any decent C compiler. Of couse this will require some code generation or just a lot of typing to get the access to basic facilities. I believe there would be a transition period and then the open-source community comes up with some automated solution to consume the WinRT APIs.
2) A quick list of available options right now.
Dev tools: MinGW or Cygwin (GCC toolchain + unix-like tools), Clang maybe, OpenWatcom as a thing from the past
GUI Libraries: FLTK, Qt, wxWidgets, Fox GUI toolkit, librocket (if you are into the OpenGL world)
IDEs: Code::Blocks, Eclipse+CDT, QtCreator
3) There's also a non-C++ way:
The FreePascal+Lazarus to allow Delphi-like RAD
Mono/SharpDevelop
Both options can use C++ code with some bindings.
4) Conclusions
These are the alternatives which give similar results but not always the similar level of comfort.
Yet another possibility would be Qt Creator, which comes with a full toolset targeting Windows (as well as MacOS, Linux, and Symbian). It is definitely somewhat different from VS, so it takes some getting used to, but overall I'd rate it as pretty decent. Qt (the library) generates somewhat mixed feelings -- some dislike its oddities (E.g., MOC), but quite a few consider it the best designed GUI toolkit available.
Don't forget the Netbeans GUI which is also available for windoze. It works great, just install mingw and choose this mingw/bin directory for the compiler tools and mysys/bin/make.exe as the make program
to download
https://netbeans.org/downloads/index.html
they have this plugin for vc++
http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/42519/vcc4n-visual-c-compiler-for-netbeans
some install info
https://netbeans.org/community/magazine/html/03/c++/
Another IDE that I havent used but looks good is
http://www.codeblocks.org/

Cross-Platform Objective-C / C++ Development

I work in a team of developers, one of us works specifically under Windows, and I work primarily in Mac OS X. We're wanting to develop C-based applications either in C++ or Objective-C however I'm not really knowledgeable in how to go about a cross-platform development project.
Is it viable to work in C++ using Mac OS X? Obviously they're geared towards Objective-C but is there just as much support for C++. What about cross-platform development in these languages? I'd use something like boost and some kind of UI library.
Has anyone got any experience in developing for multiple platforms yet allow applications to run natively without the need for a VM?
EDIT: There's a lot of answers I want to mark as correct now. It seems like Qt is the way to go and develop it in C++. Chances are this will be for *nix, OS X and Windows so that would be the best option for us personally. If I can avoid writing Objective-C so the team sticks to C++ then all the better. If I have to write the GUI in Objective-C and mix and match then that's not too much bother either.
I work for a software company that produces software for Mac OS X and Windows using C++, MFC, and Objective-C.
Yes, it is definitely possible.
You probably will be best served if you develop the "core" of the application in C++. In a MVC application, the C++ part would be the model, and possibly the controllers. For the code that interfaces to the GUI and other OS-specific interfaces, you should use the native APIs: Objective-C on Mac OS X and C# on Windows XP.
The good thing about the Mac is that you can compile C++ and Objective-C together. You can even have Objective-C++ where C++ and Objective-C are compiled in the same compilation unit. Unfortunately you cannot do this with C# (there is something called Managed C++ which is a different beast).
I would avoid cross-platform frameworks such as Qt and wxWidgets. They both allow you to develop cross-platform applications, but the look and feel of such applications is sub-par. I have more familiarity with wxWidgets though, its design is heavily geared towards the Windows MFC paradigm of application design.
Edit May 14, 2009, 9:44 AM EST: If Qt now allows true look and feel of the native platform, it could be a good option. I haven't looked at the latest offering so you may want to look at that framework before designing your own. That decision should be made after examining the results of the applications and how comfortable you are with the design paradigms that Qt requires.
You could look at Qt. I've used it successfully on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX projects.
what I use, is have a common library written in C or C++ with all the core functionality of your application.
Let's say you are building a solitaire game. So you will have core classes in a pure C++ (mostly platform independent) library.
CoreSolitaire
Then, you will have separate UI projects, one for each platform you want to deploy your solitaire on:
iSolitaire (Objective-C, MultiTouch Cocoa Based for iPhoneOS)
MacSolitaire (Objective-C, Cocoa Based for Mac OS X)
WinSolitaire (C++, Win32 or C# Based for Windows plaforms)
GSolitaire (C++, GNome/GTK based for linux/unix)
It's more work, but, in my opinion, the resulting product is definitely better than one you could get by using a platform independent widget set like QT or wxWidgets.
Having said this, if you are going to deploy your product internally in a company where you have full control of the deployment environment, and you don't care that much about how the resulting product will behave on different platforms, you could definitely use a common API for everything (QT, wxWidgets, or any other you might encounter).
Is it viable to work in C++ using Mac OS X? Obviously they're geared towards Objective-C but is there just as much support for C++.
Yes, there is.
You can do pretty much anything you want with C++ in OS X --anything that you could do with C++ on Linux, for example. There is support for the gcc's C++ compiler, c++ libraries, et all. Xcode provides support for working with C++.
You can even mix c++ with objective-C with Objective-C++ (Note, however, that this is not portable for GUI work).
What about cross-platform development in these languages? I'd use something like boost and some kind of UI library.
I believe that your best bet is QT.
It is a stable C++ library that is cross-platform (Windows, OSX, Linux and more), has been around for over a decade, is well supported, with many commercial apps written in it (Skype, Adobe Photoshop Album) and a ton of open source stuff written with it (the KDE desktop for starters). Besides GUI stuff it provides a whole lot more (container classes, xml, database connectivity, etc).
You can develop both Open Source and proprietary (closed source) apps for free with the latest QT, and the library was recently bought by NOKIA, a huge multinational, so it isn't going away any time soon.
Besides the library, QT also comes with an IDE and a Visual Forms Designer (all for free).
Other cross-platform GUI libraries for C++ also exist for OS X (wxWidgets, gtkmm, et al).
Has anyone got any experience in
developing for multiple platforms yet
allow applications to run natively
without the need for a VM?
Slightly. Make sure that you wrap around all the platform specific code.
That way you're main application or library doesn't need to reference the platform specific code. That should make it alot easier when porting to another platform.