Functionality
HttpTracer allows you to see all HTTP requests coming from your browser and the web server responses.
Request Tab
The Request Viewer tab shows you all HTTP Commands as they are sent by your browser. Note: the viewer window is updated every 3 seconds. You can freeze it by clicking the Freeze checkbox.
Response Tab
The Response Viewer tab shows you all responses sent by the web server to your browser. Note: the viewer window is updated every 3 seconds. You can freeze it by clicking the Freeze checkbox.
List Tab
The List Tab it probably the most usefull dialog in HttpTracer. It shows all browser requests and the web server's respective responses. Each response is tied back to the specific request that generated the response. Note: the other trace dialogs (Response and Request) show the responses and requests as they go through the system. Since your browser is multi-threaded, it is often difficult to match a response to a request. The List Tab does this for you.
Important!!! The List Tab does not automatically refresh. You need to hit the Refresh button in order to refresh the list.
What does the List Tab show?
- Verb / Response. The first line of the request or response. The red arrow indicates a browser request. The green arrow indicates a server response. Note: usually a response from the web server will come in multiple parts. You can see the entire response by selecting a set of responses (using the shift key) and hitting Show.
- Conversation Id. This is HttpTracer terminology for identifying a request / response combination. Convesation Ids are made up of two numbers. The first number identifies each new socket. The second number is a sequence number for any action on that socket.
- Bytes. The number of bytes (sent or recieved).
- Response Time. This number is the response time in seconds. Response Lines (green arrows) show the response time for that line. Request Lines (red arrows) show the response time from when the request started to the time that the last part of the response completed. Note: you might see some large response times (20 or 30 seconds) that don't seem correct. This occurrs because a socket was opened, held open and eventually timed out. The timeout generates a close socket (which is a response and gets counted as such.)
How do I see the full text of the request/response?
Select (or multi-select) an item or set of items, and click Show. You can see a complete conversation (request and response) using multi-select and Show.
What does the Fix Carriage Returns check box do?
Carriage returns come in two flavors. UNIX and Microsoft Windows each have a different character string for handling end-of-line strings. If you see a whole bunch of | symbols and the output (in the right hand window) is hard to read, click this check box, and HttpTracer will scan and replace UNIX end-of-line strings with Windows end-of-line strings. Note: the scan and replace can be time consumming, so you might want to leave it off unless you need it.
Log File
You can save trace information to a tab seperated log file using the SAVE AND CLEAR button. You will need to enter a file name to write out a log file. The log file contains the first line of the Request/Response as well as response time metrics. Note: Saving to a file will also clear out the data from HttpTracer.
Clear Data
You can clear out the data from HttpTracer. This will save on memory and make it easier to read you next set of traces. Note: HttpTracer will eventually run out of memory if you do not periodically clear trace data.
Why do some responses say - X bytes of data?
HttpTracer writes out this message to indicate that the data is not a content type that it understands or can display as normal ASCII data. Usually it is binary data or encrypted data (or data that only an application can interpret). Future versions MAY allow the user to set the content types that will be displayed.
Automation Routines
Future versions MAY allow users to create batch scripts that can run HTTP Commands for automating and/or running stress testing of web applications.
This enhancement is being studied and MAY or MAY NOT be written in the near future.