Stetho

Stetho is a sophisticated debug bridge for Android applications. When enabled, developers have access to the Chrome Developer Tools feature natively part of the Chrome desktop browser. Developers can also choose to enable the optional dumpapp tool which offers a powerful command-line interface to application internals.

Features

Chrome DevTools UI

The integration with the Chrome DevTools frontend is implemented using a client/server protocol which Stetho provides for your application. Once your application is integrated, simply navigate to chrome://inspect and click "Inspect" to get started!

Network inspection

Network inspection is possible with the full spectrum of Chrome Developer Tools features, including image preview, JSON response helpers, and even exporting traces to the HAR format.

Database inspection

SQLite databases can be visualized and interactively explored with full read/write capabilities.

dumpapp

Dumpapp extends beyond the DevTools UI features shown above to provide a much more extensible, command-line interface to application components. A default set of plugins is provided, but the real power of dumpapp is the ability to easily create your own!

Integration

Download

Download the latest JARs or grab via Gradle:

compile 'com.facebook.stetho:stetho:1.0.0'

or Maven:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.facebook.stetho</groupId>
  <artifactId>stetho</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Only the main stetho dependency is strictly required, however you may also wish to use one of the network helpers:

compile 'com.facebook.stetho:stetho-okhttp:1.0.0'

or:

compile 'com.facebook.stetho:stetho-urlconnection:1.0.0'

Set-up

Integrating with Stetho is intended to be seamless and straightforward for most existing Android applications. There is a simple initialization step which occurs in your Application class:

public class MyApplication extends Application {
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Stetho.initialize(
        Stetho.newInitializerBuilder(this)
            .enableDumpapp(Stetho.defaultDumperPluginsProvider(this))
            .enableWebKitInspector(Stetho.defaultInspectorModulesProvider(this))
            .build());
  }
}

This brings up most of the default configuration but does not enable some additional hooks (most notably, network inspection). See below for specific details on individual subsystems.

Enable network inspection

If you are using the popular OkHttp library at the 2.2.x+ release, you can use the Interceptors system to automatically hook into your existing stack. This is currently the simplest and most straightforward way to enable network inspection:

OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient();
client.networkInterceptors().add(new StethoInterceptor());

If you are using HttpURLConnection, you can use StethoURLConnectionManager to assist with integration though you should be aware that there are some caveats with this approach. In particular, you must explicitly add Accept-Encoding: gzip to the request headers and manually handle compressed responses in order for Stetho to report compressed payload sizes.

See the stetho-sample project for more details.

Custom dumpapp plugins

Custom plugins are the preferred means of extending the dumpapp system and can be added easily during configuration. Simply replace your configuration step as such:

Stetho.initialize(Stetho.newInitializerBuilder(context)
    .enableDumpapp(new MyDumperPluginsProvider(context))
    .build())

private static class MyDumperPluginsProvider implements DumperPluginsProvider {
  ...

  public Iterable<DumperPlugin> get() {
    ArrayList<DumperPlugin> plugins = new ArrayList<DumperPlugin>();
    for (DumperPlugin defaultPlugin : Stetho.defaultDumperPluginsProvider(mContext).get()) {
      plugins.add(defaultPlugin);
    }
    plugins.add(new MyDumperPlugin());
    return plugins;
  }
}