HTTP Wiretap - An HTTP Recorder

HTTP Wiretap is a library used to log HTTP requests and responses within your application. This can be useful when trying to determine what is occurring in your application or when trying to debug someone else's application.

This library follows the rules of Semantic Versioning.

To install HTTP Wiretap, simply install the gem:

$ [sudo] gem install http-wiretap

And enable it within your application:

require 'http/wiretap'
HTTP::Wiretap.start()

And disable it when you're done:

HTTP::Wiretap.stop()

Or clear out your log directory while running:

HTTP::Wiretap.clear()

By default, all requests will be logged to http-log of your present working directory. Also, your http-log directory will be cleared out each time you run start().

HTTP Wiretap will log HTTP traffic in two modes:

1. Raw - Logs traffic in the order that it occurred.
2. Host - Groups traffic by host and path

When logging, data written will be linked with a symbolic link to save space and reduce I/O.

The http-log directory is separated by mode and then each request is written into a directory that contains a request file and a response file. Each of these files contain the headers and body.

If your application were to make the following requests:

http://abc.com/login
http://xyz.com/users
http://xyz.com/users/1/favorites
http://abc.com/fetch_info.pl?foo=bar
http://abc.com/fetch_info.pl?foo=baz

Then your http-log directory will show the following:

+ http-log/
  + raw/
    + 0/
      + request
      + response
    + 1/
      + request
      + response
    + 2/
      + request
      + response
    + 3/
      + request
      + response
  + host/
    + abc.com/
      + login/
        + 0/
          + request
          + response
      + fetch_info.pl/
        + 0/
          + request
          + response
        + 1/
          + request
          + response
    + xyz.com/
      + users/
        + 0/
          + request
          + response
        + 1/
          + favorites/
            + 0/
              + request
              + response

There can be overlap when making calls to a /users path and then a /users/0 path since requests are numbered. If anyone has a better idea of how to structure this while keeping it simple, please let me know.

If you'd like to contribute to HTTP Wiretap, start by forking the repository on GitHub:

http://github.com/benbjohnson/http-wiretap

Please add test coverage to your code when submitting pull requests.