This project is an example of how to capture network traffic using Selenium WebDriver with Browsermob-proxy. Unit tests employing Firefox and Chrome webdrivers capturing both HTTP and HTTPS traffic are included.
The primary reason this project is shared is that many Selenium traffic capture examples and how-tos suggest the process is rather simple, but in practice, at least with the version of Firefox the author has, the following problems were encountered:
- merely configuring the
DesiredCapabilitiesobject for the Firefox webdriver does not actually configure the driver to use the proxy - many examples of how to customize the Firefox profile for the webdriver fail to include instructions for specifying that the same proxy be used for HTTPS requests
- empty HAR files are produced by browsermob-proxy if the webdriver proxy is not configured correctly
- by default, the Firefox driver does not accept the certificate provided by Browsermob-proxy to MITM SSL traffic, and configuring the Firefox profile for the webdriver to accept a custom self-signed certificate is nontrivial
- Browsermob-proxy does not respect the system properties that define a proxy for the JVM, so if you have an upstream proxy, the Browsermob proxy must be configured explicitly from the system properties
This project is a working demonstration of network traffic capture that is small enough to comprehend but shows a fair number of ways you can customize it for your needs.