Protoscope 0.7.2

Protoscope is a utility that aids Web developers by revealing the HTTP communication in their own applications. It is a nice tool for Web developers who want to "look under the hood" as they develop.

Protoscope is somehow like a HTTP proxy serve and runs like it. It expects to receive HTTP requests from a Web client (such as your Web browser) that is configured to use a proxy.

Note: Most Web browsers allow you to conveniently select a proxy server to use, and the Protoscope Web site will eventually have instructions on how to achieve this for those who need assistance. If you write a HOWTO for configuring a particular browser to use Protoscope, I will gladly link to it. See http://shiflett.org/projects/protoscope/ for more information.

Protoscope forwards the HTTP requests to the origin server just as a proxy would and replies to the Web client with the servers responses. This is all transparent to the Web browser, and it does not affect your browsing in any way.

The difference is that Protoscope logs all communication in the log file that you configure it to use, so that you can examine this log file (or tail it) to examine the HTTP transactions.

In addition, version 0.7.1 added the option to have this information embedded into the HTML document itself. This makes debugging and related tasks extremely efficient while you are developing, and it can even help to avoid having to view source and risk the page being expired from cache or any other annoyances. Simply scroll to the bottom of the page anytime there is a question about the current
transaction. This is the recommended way to use Protoscope.