Linux-alternative to Fiddler2

Question

I have used Fiddler2 with great results on windows before, but now I have moved to using linux for development. The problem I have, is that I have not been able to find a decent replacement for Fiddler2 that will run on linux.

I have tried Wireshark, but it is perhaps too generic in what it does, and I can never really make any sense of its output.

What tools do you use on linux to debug/inspect web-traffic during development?

Answer 1

Charles looks good, although it isn't free.

There are various plugins for firefox such as Live HTTP headers that do some of this.

Answer 2

You could continue to use Fiddler anyway, as you'll definitely want to run Windows VMs to test your applications (Assuming you support Windows as a client OS for your app).

If on the other hand, your app is 100% Linux-only and doesn't support Windows as a client environment, then you can still install a VM to run Fiddler (Fiddler is a proxy and sits between the client and server hence does not depend on a specific client or server).

I can't imagine developing any web app which doesn't support Windows as a client OS, it would be commercially inadvisable.

Answer 3

You could run Fiddler on a different machine and set that as your HTTP proxy; this way, it doesn't matter on what OS your app runs. As MarkR notes, "different machine" can also mean "inside a VM."

Answer 4

Late to the game, I know, but there is also WebScarab which is a free Java web proxy similar to Fiddler. Quite good, I've been using it for years.

Answer 5

There is another Java application that aims to do what Fiddler does called Paros. Runs in Linux and Windows, etc.

Answer 6

Firebug is a good option. Granted that it doesn't even get close to the functionality provided by Fiddler (i.e. breakpoints, rules, etc.) but if all you want is just to inspect http requests and responses, Firebug is decent enough.

http://getfirebug.com/network

Answer 7

WebScarab-ng is distributed using java webstart at

http://dawes.za.net/rogan/webscarab-ng/webstart/WebScarab-ng.jnlp

So you can give it a whirl and forget about if you think it stinks since its not installed (well - if you already have the java plugin installed in your browser ;-)