qt-rest-client

A small, dependency-light HTTP/REST client built on top of Qt's QNetworkAccessManager. It takes care of the tedious parts of building a request (query strings, form-urlencoded / JSON / multipart bodies, file uploads, custom headers) and exposes the response through a simple signal.

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Features

• GET / POST / PUT / HEAD / DELETE, plus arbitrary custom verbs (PATCH, …)
• Request body layouts: query string, application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/json, and multipart/form-data
• File uploads from disk or from an in-memory byte array
• Custom raw headers
• Asynchronous by default — emits executionFinished() when done
• Each worker owns its own access manager, so workers are independent and can run from different threads

Requirements

• Qt 6 (Core + Network)
• C++17
• CMake ≥ 3.15

Building

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

To install system-wide:

cmake --install build

The qmake files (restClient.pro, RESTclient.pri) are still around for the test project, but CMake is the primary build system for the library.

Usage

#include "HttpRequestWorker.h"

HttpRequestInput input(QStringLiteral("https://httpbin.org/get?foo=bar"),
                       HttpMethod::Get);

HttpRequestWorker* worker = new HttpRequestWorker(this);
worker->setReadResponseOnError(true);

QObject::connect(worker, &HttpRequestWorker::executionFinished,
                 [](HttpRequestWorker* w) {
                     qDebug() << "status:" << w->statusCode;
                     qDebug() << "body:" << w->response;
                     w->deleteLater();
                 });

worker->execute(&input);

Posting JSON is just a different layout:

HttpRequestInput input(QStringLiteral("https://httpbin.org/post"), HttpMethod::Post);
input.varLayout = HttpRequestVarLayout::Json;
input.addVar("name", "alice");
input.addVar("meta", R"({"role":"admin"})"); // embedded as a nested object

See main.cpp for a runnable example and test/ for the functional tests.

Tests

The tests in test/ hit the public postman-echo.com echo endpoint, so they need network access. Build and run them with qmake:

cd test
qmake && make && ./rest_client_test