curl_easy_init - Man Page

#include <curl/curl.h>

CURL *curl_easy_init();

This function allocates and returns a CURL easy handle. Such a handle is used 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.

The easy handle is used to hold and control a single network transfer. It is encouraged to reuse easy handles for repeated transfers.

An alternative way to get a new easy handle is to duplicate an already existing one with curl_easy_duphandle(3), which has the upside that it gets all the options that were set in the source handle set in the new copy as well.

If you did not already call curl_global_init(3) before calling this function, curl_easy_init(3) does it automatically. This can be lethal in multi-threaded cases for platforms where curl_global_init(3) is not thread-safe, and it may then 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.

This functionality affects all supported protocols

int main(void)
{
  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);
  }
}

Added in curl 7.1

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

curl_easy_cleanup(3), curl_easy_duphandle(3), curl_easy_perform(3), curl_easy_reset(3), curl_global_init(3), curl_multi_init(3)

curl_easy_cleanup(3), curl_easy_duphandle(3), curl_easy_perform(3), curl_easy_reset(3), curl_easy_setopt(3), curl_global_init(3), curl_multi_cleanup(3), curl_multi_init(3), libcurl(3), libcurl-easy(3), libcurl-thread(3), libcurl-ws(3).