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InternetConnectA function (wininet.h)

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Opens an File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or HTTP session for a given site.

Syntax

HINTERNET InternetConnectA(
  [in] HINTERNET     hInternet,
  [in] LPCSTR        lpszServerName,
  [in] INTERNET_PORT nServerPort,
  [in] LPCSTR        lpszUserName,
  [in] LPCSTR        lpszPassword,
  [in] DWORD         dwService,
  [in] DWORD         dwFlags,
  [in] DWORD_PTR     dwContext
);

Parameters

[in] hInternet

Handle returned by a previous call to InternetOpen.

[in] lpszServerName

Pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies the host name of an Internet server. Alternately, the string can contain the IP number of the site, in ASCII dotted-decimal format (for example, 11.0.1.45).

[in] nServerPort

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) port on the server. These flags set only the port that is used. The service is set by the value of dwService. This parameter can be one of the following values.

Value Meaning
INTERNET_DEFAULT_FTP_PORT
 Uses the default port for FTP servers (port 21).
INTERNET_DEFAULT_GOPHER_PORT
 Uses the default port for Gopher servers (port 70).
Note  Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 R2 and earlier only.
 
INTERNET_DEFAULT_HTTP_PORT
 Uses the default port for HTTP servers (port 80).
INTERNET_DEFAULT_HTTPS_PORT
 Uses the default port for Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) servers (port 443).
INTERNET_DEFAULT_SOCKS_PORT
 Uses the default port for SOCKS firewall servers (port 1080).
INTERNET_INVALID_PORT_NUMBER
 Uses the default port for the service specified by dwService.

[in] lpszUserName

Pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies the name of the user to log on. If this parameter is NULL, the function uses an appropriate default. For the FTP protocol, the default is "anonymous".

[in] lpszPassword

Pointer to a null-terminated string that contains the password to use to log on. If both lpszPassword and lpszUsername are NULL, the function uses the default "anonymous" password. In the case of FTP, the default password is the user's email name. If lpszPassword is NULL, but lpszUsername is not NULL, the function uses a blank password.

[in] dwService

Type of service to access. This parameter can be one of the following values.

Value Meaning
INTERNET_SERVICE_FTP
 FTP service.
INTERNET_SERVICE_GOPHER
 Gopher service.
Note  Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 R2 and earlier only.
 
INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP
 HTTP service.

[in] dwFlags

Options specific to the service used. If
dwService is INTERNET_SERVICE_FTP, INTERNET_FLAG_PASSIVE causes the application to use passive FTP semantics.

[in] dwContext

Pointer to a variable that contains an application-defined value that is used to identify the application context for the returned handle in callbacks.

Return value

Returns a valid handle to the session if the connection is successful, or NULL otherwise. To retrieve extended error information, call GetLastError. An application can also use InternetGetLastResponseInfo to determine why access to the service was denied.

Remarks

The following table describes the behavior for the four possible settings of lpszUsername and lpszPassword.

lpszUsername lpszPassword User name sent to FTP server Password sent to FTP server
NULL NULL "anonymous" User's email name
Non-NULL string NULL lpszUsername ""
NULL Non-NULL string ERROR ERROR
Non-NULL string Non-NULL string lpszUsername lpszPassword
 

For FTP sites, InternetConnect actually establishes a connection with the server; for others, the actual connection is not established until the application requests a specific transaction.

For maximum efficiency, applications using the HTTP protocols should try to minimize calls to InternetConnect and avoid calling this function for every transaction requested by the user. One way to accomplish this is to keep a small cache of handles returned from InternetConnect; when the user makes a request to a previously accessed server, that session handle is still available.

After the calling application has finished using the HINTERNET handle returned by InternetConnect, it must be closed using the InternetCloseHandle function.

Note  When a request is sent asynchronous mode (the dwFlags parameter of InternetOpen specifies INTERNET_FLAG_ASYNC), and the dwContext parameter is zero (INTERNET_NO_CALLBACK), the callback function set with InternetSetStatusCallback on the connection handle will not be called, however, the call will still be performed in asynchronous mode.

Examples of InternetConnect usage can be found in the following topics.

Like all other aspects of the WinINet API, this function cannot be safely called from within DllMain or the constructors and destructors of global objects.

Note  WinINet does not support server implementations. In addition, it should not be used from a service. For server implementations or services use Microsoft Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP).
 

Note

The wininet.h header defines InternetConnect as an alias that automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that is not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement Value
Minimum supported client Windows 2000 Professional [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform Windows
Header wininet.h
Library Wininet.lib
DLL Wininet.dll

See also

Enabling Internet Functionality

WinINet Functions