Manpages - curl_easy_init.3

curl_easy_init - Start a libcurl easy session

#include <curl/curl.h>

CURL *curl_easy_init( );

This function must be the first function to call, and it returns a CURL easy handle that you must use as input to other functions in the easy interface. This call MUST have a corresponding call to curl_easy_cleanup(3) when the operation is complete.

If you did not already call curl_global_init(3), curl_easy_init(3) does it automatically. This may be lethal in multi-threaded cases, since curl_global_init(3) is not thread-safe, and it may result in resource problems because there is no corresponding cleanup.

You are strongly advised to not allow this automatic behavior, by calling curl_global_init(3) yourself properly. See the description in *libcurl*(3) of global environment requirements for details of how to use this function.

  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode res;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com");
    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }

Always

If this function returns NULL, something went wrong and you cannot use the other curl functions.

*curl_easy_cleanup*(3), *curl_global_init*(3), *curl_easy_reset*(3), *curl_easy_perform*(3)