Parsing MT4 config files

Question

I'm trying to write an install script for an MT4 expert advisor. Part of the installation process includes adding an allowed WebRequest URL. I assume this is saved as a setting in C:\Users\{User ID}\AppData\Roaming\MetaQuotes\Terminal\{Terminal ID}\config\experts.ini as I can see the allowed URLs there, but I cannot parse this data as no editor I have can decode it. Is this file parsed using a proprietary encoding or is it encrypted in some way? Any help here would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The only solution I could think of to address this issue was to create my own HTTP web request library, here, and use it to submit HTTP requests.

#include <mql-http/Request.mqh>
#include <mql5-json/Json.mqh>

int SendWebRequest(const object request) {

   string body = ConvertToJSON(request);  // You'll have to write your own JSON converter
   
   HttpRequest req("POST", m_send_addr, body);
   req.AddHeader("Accept", "application/json");
   req.AddHeader("Authorization", m_auth_header);
   
   HttpResponse resp;
   int errCode = req.Send(resp);
   if (errCode != 0) {
      return errCode;
   } else if (resp.StatusCode != 200) {
      return resp.StatusCode;
   } else {
      return 0;
   }
}

At the moment this is pretty bare-bones but it's open-source so feel free to modify and contribute.