I want to access my browser's network console output via JavaScript or maybe another language.
Here is a screenshot of the Firefox network console on YouTube:
I just want to retrieve every URL my browser GETs, and do it in JavaScript, if possible (I insert my scripts in the page using the Firefox Scratchpad).
Edit: A bit more information about my project
I want to download a collection of "text to speech" samples generated by a website. But I don't want to use their API, because I know exactly how much samples I need (the number is above 300, so I don't want to do it manually).
By using a normal JS script inside your browser won't give you access to this Firefox Panel, due to security reasons. But an alternative (For Google Chrome) is to type chrome://net-internals/#events in the Chrome address bar. This will open the Network Monitor. There you can type Ctrl+Shift+J or Cmd+Option+J (On Mac OS) and gain access to all HTTP events with JavaScript directly in the console.
Related
I am trying to make a chrome extension where I need access to the webcam feed once the user has allowed permission and has toggled on button in the extension popup. The feed should (and the extension) should keep running persistently until the user has stopped the feed via the control in the popup or has exited chrome.
Unfortunately, there's not sufficient information as to how to do this, let alone access webcam from the extension. I did read the related answer where its mentioned to use content scripts but there's no example code for it. (And no documentation as well).
Also, unfortunately I don't have enough working code to give insight of my progress.
I'm looking for a way to open the WebKit “developer tools” from a script attached to a web-page. I need solutions for both Google Chrome and Safari, that will open the developer-tools pane if it's not already open, and (hopefully, if you can figure out how) also switch to a particular tab/section of said pane upon opening.
(Use-case, if anyone's interested: I want to open the console.log output-window if there's been an error and a developer is looking at the page; this particular page will be the output of some JavaScript unit-tests.)
I'm setting a bounty on this question because it's obviously one that hasn't been answered to anyone's satisfaction before, and the answer is a hairy one. Please don't answer it unless you have a real answer that both: 1) works in both browsers, and 2) doesn't require private extension APIs that won't work from a static web-page.
See (related, but specific to Chrome, and extensions): Can I programmatically open the devtools from a Google Chrome extension?
Simply: You can't.
The Dev Tools are not sandboxed (unlike any web page), thus granting sandboxed environments the power to open and control an unsandboxed environment is a major security design flaw.
I hope this answers your question :-)
You cannot directly use the Chrome's Dev Tools from your web pages. It is bundled with the browser.
But you can use it like a regular web application. Go to Chrome Developer Tools, then go to Contributing. You will find help on using Dev Tools for your app.
Setting up
Install Chrome Canary on Mac OS / Windows or download the latest Chromium build from the Chromium continuous builds archive on Linux
Clone Blink git repo from https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink.git
Set up a local web server that would serve files from WebKit/Source/WebCore/inspector on some port (8090)
Running
Run one copy of Chrome Canary with the following command line flags: --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir=blink/chromeServerProfile --remote-debugging-frontend="http://localhost:8090/front_end/inspector.html". These flags cause Chrome to allow websocket connections into localhost:9222 and to serve the front-end UI from your local git repo. (Adjust the path to chromeServerProfile to be some writable directory in your system).
Open a sample page (eg www.chromium.org).
Run a second copy of Chrome Canary with the command line flag: --user-data-dir=/work/chromeClientProfile. Open http://localhost:9222. Among the thumbnails you will see the sample page from the other browser instance. Click on it to start remote debugging your sample page.
The DevTools web page that opens is served from the remote-debugging-frontend in the first browser instance, which serves from the git repo your local filesystem. Debug this Devtools Web page and edit its source like any other web app.
I hope this is what you need.
There's no way to control the web developer tool from an in-page script, other than through the Console API which provides mostly logging facilities. Letting scripts control more than that would be a serious security issue, since it would allow a web page to control parts of the browser.
The only API remotely related to what you're trying to do is the debugger command, which switches to the script pane only if the developer tools were already open.
But who are you trying to develop this feature for?
If it's for developers working on the site, then it's better to just use the existing developer tools manually, by setting breakpoints, or the pause on exceptions toggle.
If it's for end users, don't. Unless your site is supposed to be used by highly technical web developers, you're only going to scare away users if the developer tools suddenly pop up with errors.
If you really want to show errors you can implement your own logging framework and the UI for error reporting, which works with basic JS and doesn't depend on a specific browser environment.
here's another answer that proposes a solution to your mentioned use case/objective (detecting errors, getting & displaying console logs) and not the not possible objective in the title.
you can make and use a console wrapper and use it in your code
and/or you can monkey patch the console functions if you use/import external js, but you need to apply it before loading them.
No, Any secure Browser will not allow a script to open an extension, as it leads to insecurity.
But, You may design an Add-On/extension OR Console API's to do the same.. for specific site.
Create an Add-On like this to achieve that requirement.
You can try sending keys 'CTRL' + SHIFT' + 'I'
that may work for Chrome any FireFox (in I.E you need to use 'F12'
I am using it when required as few utils in this add-on use to work better then the built-in.
EDIT:
Now a days Chrome is advanced with many new advancements source.
I hope this helps!
Hate to answer such an old question, but was surprised to not see this as an answer, so I thought I'd add it in case it can help someone in the future.
Assuming you have access to the source code, you can place an alert("open devtools"); statement immediately before the first line you're interested in debugging. This alert will give you an opportunity to open DevTools and set a breakpoint on that first line before clearing the alert thus allowing the code to continue and hitting the breakpoint.
I'm currently using the "Developer mode" on the chrome://extensions page of the chromium browser, loading it by clicking on "Reload (Ctrl+R)".
I'd like to be able to make a change to my unpacked chrome extension and load it into the browser in an automated way, especially since I'm testing the extension on a virtual machine so doing all this completely headlessly would be ideal. However, I would at least like to avoid having to click every time I want to load my extension, and I'd like to be able to collect any errors produced into a file/tty.
What is the best way of doing this? Does chrome provide tools for automating extension building and testing?
Regarding the other question linked below:
It doesn't really address my problem, since I am looking for a way to get console output, stack traces and any output generated by the extension reload to be accessible via a file/stream in my OS, as opposed to being displayed in a chromium browser window. The linked answers provide a way to reload the extension programmatically, but not much else.
There are a few avenues for you to research.
You could look into enabling logging with a high verbosity. In principle, I would think there is a level that echoes console output; I'm no expert though.
You could use Native Messaging to speak to a daemon that will log things for you; the downside is that you probably can't catch errors this way.
You could take this one step further and create an extension that attaches to your target extension with Remote Debugging protocol (which provides the same info as DevTools) using the chrome.debugger API, and then log stuff with Native Messaging.
Or, you could eschew using an extension as a supervisor and just use/write an external Remote Debugging client.
I'm looking for a way to open the WebKit “developer tools” from a script attached to a web-page. I need solutions for both Google Chrome and Safari, that will open the developer-tools pane if it's not already open, and (hopefully, if you can figure out how) also switch to a particular tab/section of said pane upon opening.
(Use-case, if anyone's interested: I want to open the console.log output-window if there's been an error and a developer is looking at the page; this particular page will be the output of some JavaScript unit-tests.)
I'm setting a bounty on this question because it's obviously one that hasn't been answered to anyone's satisfaction before, and the answer is a hairy one. Please don't answer it unless you have a real answer that both: 1) works in both browsers, and 2) doesn't require private extension APIs that won't work from a static web-page.
See (related, but specific to Chrome, and extensions): Can I programmatically open the devtools from a Google Chrome extension?
Simply: You can't.
The Dev Tools are not sandboxed (unlike any web page), thus granting sandboxed environments the power to open and control an unsandboxed environment is a major security design flaw.
I hope this answers your question :-)
You cannot directly use the Chrome's Dev Tools from your web pages. It is bundled with the browser.
But you can use it like a regular web application. Go to Chrome Developer Tools, then go to Contributing. You will find help on using Dev Tools for your app.
Setting up
Install Chrome Canary on Mac OS / Windows or download the latest Chromium build from the Chromium continuous builds archive on Linux
Clone Blink git repo from https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink.git
Set up a local web server that would serve files from WebKit/Source/WebCore/inspector on some port (8090)
Running
Run one copy of Chrome Canary with the following command line flags: --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir=blink/chromeServerProfile --remote-debugging-frontend="http://localhost:8090/front_end/inspector.html". These flags cause Chrome to allow websocket connections into localhost:9222 and to serve the front-end UI from your local git repo. (Adjust the path to chromeServerProfile to be some writable directory in your system).
Open a sample page (eg www.chromium.org).
Run a second copy of Chrome Canary with the command line flag: --user-data-dir=/work/chromeClientProfile. Open http://localhost:9222. Among the thumbnails you will see the sample page from the other browser instance. Click on it to start remote debugging your sample page.
The DevTools web page that opens is served from the remote-debugging-frontend in the first browser instance, which serves from the git repo your local filesystem. Debug this Devtools Web page and edit its source like any other web app.
I hope this is what you need.
There's no way to control the web developer tool from an in-page script, other than through the Console API which provides mostly logging facilities. Letting scripts control more than that would be a serious security issue, since it would allow a web page to control parts of the browser.
The only API remotely related to what you're trying to do is the debugger command, which switches to the script pane only if the developer tools were already open.
But who are you trying to develop this feature for?
If it's for developers working on the site, then it's better to just use the existing developer tools manually, by setting breakpoints, or the pause on exceptions toggle.
If it's for end users, don't. Unless your site is supposed to be used by highly technical web developers, you're only going to scare away users if the developer tools suddenly pop up with errors.
If you really want to show errors you can implement your own logging framework and the UI for error reporting, which works with basic JS and doesn't depend on a specific browser environment.
here's another answer that proposes a solution to your mentioned use case/objective (detecting errors, getting & displaying console logs) and not the not possible objective in the title.
you can make and use a console wrapper and use it in your code
and/or you can monkey patch the console functions if you use/import external js, but you need to apply it before loading them.
No, Any secure Browser will not allow a script to open an extension, as it leads to insecurity.
But, You may design an Add-On/extension OR Console API's to do the same.. for specific site.
Create an Add-On like this to achieve that requirement.
You can try sending keys 'CTRL' + SHIFT' + 'I'
that may work for Chrome any FireFox (in I.E you need to use 'F12'
I am using it when required as few utils in this add-on use to work better then the built-in.
EDIT:
Now a days Chrome is advanced with many new advancements source.
I hope this helps!
Hate to answer such an old question, but was surprised to not see this as an answer, so I thought I'd add it in case it can help someone in the future.
Assuming you have access to the source code, you can place an alert("open devtools"); statement immediately before the first line you're interested in debugging. This alert will give you an opportunity to open DevTools and set a breakpoint on that first line before clearing the alert thus allowing the code to continue and hitting the breakpoint.
I want to know if is there a way to get the network traffic of a webpage or interface connection using javascript? Basically is to implement tcpdump or Wireshark with javascript.
Any idea?
Edit
I want to get all the images/css/etc that a webpage get when it loads and would like to get this information to build a google chrome extension.
So, to get analyze the traffic of your assets you need to be familiar with chrome devTools
Open the devTools by pressing ctrl+shift+i (windows) and navigate to Network panel and there you can watch the size, time and traffice as well.
May be the global navigator objects property would throw some light.
navigator.network is the property.