CRAW++

CRAW++ is the C++ Reddit API Wrapper. CRAW++ is intended to be used as a library which can be included in a C++ project to access the Reddit API rather than making HTTP calls manually using libcurl or some other library. CRAW++ strives to be as easy to learn and use as possible while still being feature-rich. This project exists mainly because previous attempts to create a C++ Reddit API wrapper were unmaintained and undocumented.

This project is unfinished.

Dependencies

This project depends on the following libraries:

• libcurl (install libcurl4-openssl-dev on Ubuntu/Debian)
• nlohmann/json (nlohmann-json3-dev)
• libcpr/cpr

Installation

The makefile only works with GCC. Any recent version of GCC will work. It must support C++17.

Linux (recommended)

Build from source (recommended)

1. Install the dependencies. libcpr can be installed off GitHub using cmake or using vcpkg; see libcpr/cpr for instructions. libcurl-openssl-dev and nlohmann-json3-dev should be included in your distribution's repositories.
2. Run make and make install. The Makefile will also run ldconfig for convenience.

Precompiled library

A .deb package is available for 64-bit Debian and Debian-based operating systems (such as Ubuntu). Simply install this package in the usual apt install fashion. That's all that needs to be done! This package was tested on Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 11. Support is not guaranteed on any other distributions.

This package will also download, compile, and install libcpr from its GitHub repository. If you don't want this, don't install the .deb package.

Making the .deb package

The .deb package can be made using the Makefile with make debpackage. This makes a package in the root directory that can be installed with dpkg.

Windows

In general, it is far easier to use Windows Subsystem for Linux and develop in the Linux environment it provides than to attempt to set this up natively on Windows. It is also less prone to failure.

1. Install G++. Follow Microsoft's instructions to install MingGW. Only the "prerequisites" section needs to be followed.Steps 1 and 2 can be skipped if you don't intend to use VS Code.
2. Install make. You can do this through Chocolatey, the Windows package manager with choco install make, or use the "MSYS2 MSYS" program install with MinGW and run pacman -S make.
3. Install dependencies. cpr and nlohman-json can be installed using vcpkg. vcpkg requires a compatible Visual Studio (not VS Code) instance to be install on your Windows PC. The Community edition of Visual Studio, which is free of charge, works for this. You do not have to use Visual Studio, but vcpkg requires a file provided by it to install the dependencies.
4. Within your vcpkg folder, add \packages\nlohmann-json_x86-windows\include and vcpkg\packages\cpr_x86-windows\include to your include path
5. Compile the static library using make. Note that make install does not work on Windows due to Windows having a different file structure.
6. Copy the static binary and the contents of the include folder to your working directory.

macOS

macOS is unsupported because I don't have a Mac to test this library with.

Usage

Documentation

Documentation is automatically generated by Doxygen and is available at https://natenate60.xyz/crawpp. Please refer to the examples to get a rough idea of what this library can do.

Authentication

Please note that all clients are required to authenticate using OAuth, and currently the only supported way to do this is to fetch API keys on your Reddit account. You must get API keys and then pass them to a Reddit instance.

Quick Example

Here's a simple example which logs into Reddit and then makes a hello world post to r/test:

// everything you need is in craw.h
#include <crawpp/craw.h>

#include <iostream>

int main () {
    CRAW::Reddit reddit = CRAW::Reddit("username", 
                                       "SUpeR_S3cuRe-Pa$$w0rd",
                                       "client_id",
                                       "api_secret",
                                       "MyBotUserAgent/1.0");
    // go to r/test
    CRAW::Subreddit subreddit = reddit.subreddit("test");
    std::cout << "r/test has " << subreddit.subscribers << "subscribers" << std::endl;
    subreddit.subscribe();
    CRAW::Post post = subreddit.post("This is the title!", "Hello world!");
    CRAW::Comment comment = post.reply("Wow, this is a neat post! This is my comment!");
    comment.del();
    post.upvote();
    subreddit.unsubscribe();
}

Compile this program like this:

g++ myprogram.cpp -lcrawpp -lcpr -o myprogram

Just remember to always tell the linker to link libcrawpp and libcpr.