What’s the FIRST thing you’re going to want to add after you figure out how to programatically request web pages through Microsoft’s WinINet HTTP API? Perhaps add a timeout? Forget it.<\/p>\n
UPDATE<\/strong>: Even with my snotty tone, I still got some great feedback from someone at Microsoft, Ari Pernick, about the state of things – see the comments. Thanks Ari!<\/p>\n From MSDN<\/a>:<\/p>\n SYMPTOMS<\/strong> RESOLUTION<\/strong> As if it weren’t hard enough to set up the synchronous HTTP connection… I already did the threading for it, all I wanted was a timeout. And when they say “for more information”, don’t think they mean all of it. I’ve seen the word “nightmare” used to describe it more than once. There are attempts at this on CodeProject here<\/a> and here<\/a>, but nothing too straightforward. There is documentation<\/a> in MSDN, and a sample<\/a>, time to dig in…<\/p>\n Looks like there is a newer WinHTTP API<\/a>, with an example<\/a> on CodeProject. But no multipart form post, reduced cookie and cache handling, incompatible with anything pre-Windows XP (you can use Win2k with the 5.0 release, which Microsoft has purged from MSDN), etc… and still, it’s overly complex with shoddy docs… I love that word, “shoddy”, and I got to use it twice today!<\/p>\n
\nCalling InternetSetOption (or MFC CHttpFile::SetOption) with INTERNET_OPTION_SEND_TIMEOUT or INTERNET_OPTION_CONNECT_TIMEOUT does not set the specified timeout values.<\/p>\n
\nTo work around the problem you can use asynchronous WinInet mode, which prevents the WinInet function call from blocking while waiting for a connection. Please see the Internet Client SDK documentation for more information about using WinInet asynchronously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n