Application: HTTPLook

Vendor: BinaryAge Software

Home Page: www.httpsniffer.com

Price: $29.95

Rating: 9/10

Pros: Cheap, lots of features, easy to use, works with any browser or application that makes HTTP calls

Cons: Plain-looking, not free, missing a few higher-end features

If you”re working on an application that makes a bunch of HTTP calls (a spider, a data-driven Flash application, a web browser, a browser plugin, etc.), there aren”t a lot of easy ways to monitor the calls. Yes, you can step through the code in debug mode, but that”s problematic when debugging production installs. Not to mention slow and overkill. You can also look at the web logs, but sometimes you don”t have access to those, or you have to wade through thousands of lines. You could write a call-logging mechanism, but that takes time & might have bugs of its own. What you need is an easy way to log & view all the HTTP calls that a machine is making. Enter BinaryAge Software”s HTTPLook.

We have a data-driven flash application on a number of our sites. It calls web services, retrieves XML, downloads images, and hits “pixels” for traffic reporting purposes. But sometimes it would hang, or fail to load an image, or fail to poke a pixel, & it would be a PITA to see what it was doing & which calls were broken. With HTTPLook, you simple load up the application, click “Start”, and start surfing/using your app. HTTPLook records the HTTP calls as you make them. It lists the outbound requests & the returns. Status code, cookie settings, headers, bodies, all there. Plus you can filter results, save logs, etc. Here”s a screenshot:

More screenshots are here.

Now when we have problems, we can best online casino quickly pinpoint the troubled URL. We can easily inspect the XML being returned from the web services to see if there”s errant data. We can see if there are any missing images by looking for “404” return statuses. Our debugging time & troubleshooting time was cut down to less than 10% of what it was. But the best part is that it”s under $30, compared to several hundred dollars for competing products I found. And there”s a free trial, too.

I don”t mean to pimp this app too hard. I don”t get any kind of referral fee, nor do I have anything to do with the company. I was just happy to find an inexpensive app that filled a niche & saved us a ton of time, and I thought others might appreciate the tip, too.

Now, I should mention that if you have to have a free solution, you could use Ethereal, a free network analyzer. But installing it, setting it up, configuring the filters, etc. isn”t nearly as easy as HTTPLook. If you have the time, enjoy jumping through hoops, and don”t have thirty bucks to burn, try out Ethereal. But be sure to also install the trial version of HTTPLook, too — after a little while you might decide $30 isn”t too much to pay for a no-frills app that does exactly what it”s meant to do.