WProfX captures and analyzes Chrome browsing traces in order to extract dependency relationship between activities. It is a continuation of works done before in WProf and WProf-M papers.
Go to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wprofx/llogmgpdbcendfemmnebpdpdnadiakkg to add WProfX to your Chrome. You can also follow these steps to load it in your Chrome browser:
1. Visit chrome://extensions (via omnibox or menu -> Tools -> Extensions).
2. Enable Developer mode by ticking the checkbox in the upper-right corner.
3. Click on the "Load unpacked extension..." button.
4. Select the src/WProfX directory.
Double click on any area in the chart to see a more compact version of the waterfall diagram.
The JSON output option downloads a JSON file which embodies all activities involved in a page load process. Moreover, it gives information about start and end time of activities and more interestingly the dependency relationship between such activities.
For each URL, a list of entries carry information about all objects involved in processing that URL. Information include start/end times, mimeType and whether that each object has been called from a script or from the main HTML source.
"url": "http://www.cnn.com/",
"startTime": 0.0,
"mimeType": "text/html",
"id": "31739.1",
"fromScript": "Null",
"transferSize": 4079,
"endTime": 125.068,
"activityId": "Networking_0",
"responseReceivedTime": 98.156,
"statusCode": 200The entry with "id": "Deps" carries information regarding the dependency relationships between activities.
For example, the following snippet states that Scripting_71 depends on Networking_144 to be completed. Note that a -1 as a value for time field, denotes a complete dependency relationship, i.e., a1 needs to be finished before a2 can start.
{
"time": -1,
"a2": "Scripting_71",
"a1": "Networking_144"
},Whereas, a partial dependency in which, time value denotes the actual time in milliseconds when a2 can start.
{
"time": 1003.723,
"a2": "Networking_30",
"a1": "Scripting_7"
}