BrowserMob CLI

BrowserMob CLI os Rubygem to generate HAR files from command line. This will preview HAR files in the Browser as well as parse it in YAML. It works well for FirefoxDriver and ChromeDriver/GhostDriver are WIP.

If you are new to HAR(HTTP Archive) & BrowserMob Proxy then please read these couple of links

• What is HAR
• HAR Spec
• BrowserMobProxy

HAR file can be used for

• Calculate Load time.
• Set/Get HTTP Headers during your tests
• Capture performance data with HAR files.
• Simulate network traffic and latency
• Rewrite HTTP requests and response

##BrowserMob CLI can do following things:

• Download Browsermobproxy programatically and save it in /tmp

• Genarate and Preview Har file from command line by passing URL

• Genarate and Preview Har file from command line by passing URL and adding user actions

• List out request urls

Before we start, please make sure you got following packages installed

• wget

• Java version > 1.7 and JAVA_HOME set in .bashrc or .zshrc. This is important otherwise browsermob proxy server won't start. OSX Mac user can set it using

              export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)
  

• Ruby > 1.9.3

• Bundler

• Install Har gem

      $ gem install har
  

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'browsermob-cli'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install browsermob-cli

Assuming that you don't have BrowserMob Proxy downloaded, then first thing we probaly need to download it and save it to your /tmp directory (Assuming /tmp has write access). Just run following command.

    $ browsermob-cli setup

Now, you should have browsermob-proxy binary downloaded in the /tmp directory itself.

If that does't work, feel free to manually download BrowserMob proxy from official website Or from Github. Save it to /tmp/browsermob-proxy

We can generate HAR data for any url e.g (AOL website) by running

     $ browsermob-cli show_har http://www.aol.co.uk

After running this command, you should see following

• Firefox Opened up with AOL homepage within BrowserMob proxy
• All request URLS printed on console
• HAR file saved to /tmp/traffic.har
• HAR data parsed in YAML format and saved to /tmp/traffic.yml
• WEBrick server starts and open up HAR data to preview

We can generate HAR data for any url e.g (BBC website) and passing CSS Selector where you want to click

     $ browsermob-cli show_har_click http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs --locator ".rsp-img"

After running this command, you should see following

• Firefox Opened up with BBC blog homepage within BrowserMob proxy and clicked on image
• All request URLS printed on console
• HAR file saved to /tmp/traffic.har
• HAR data parsed in YAML format and saved to /tmp/traffic.yml
• WEBrick server starts and open up HAR data to preview

You can view generated YAML file with HAR data.

    $ browsermob-cli view_har_in_YAML
    $ browsermob-cli view_har_in_browser

    $ browsermob-cli
    Commands:
     browsermob-cli help [COMMAND]       # Describe available commands or one specific command
     browsermob-cli setup                # Get Browsermob Proxy from Internet
     browsermob-cli show_har URL         # Get list of all requests
     browsermob-cli show_har_click URL   # Get list of all requests when clicked on Locator
     browsermob-cli version              # Get the current version number
     browsermob-cli view_har_in_YAML     # Display HAR file in YML in your Editor
     browsermob-cli view_har_in_browser  # Open up browser and Preview HAR file. Press Ctl+C Once DONE...

• Server won't start Issue: Error message

        unable to launch the server (rerun with :log => true to see process output) (BrowserMob::Proxy::Server::ServerDiedError)
  

There may be few reason.

1] It uses port 7676. It may be in use. Clear the port by running following command

       $ kill -9 $(lsof -i tcp:3000 -t)

It works for Mac OSX.

2] Java version is below 1.7. Update your JAVA version.

3] Make sure $JAVA_HOME set correctly, for mac, it’s “export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)”.