examples/http_trace

This is a handy program that decodes HTTP and WebSocket traffic. It uses node_pcap. Install it with:

npm install http_trace

Usage http_trace [options]

Capture options:
    -i <interface>           interface name for capture (def: first with an addr)
    -f <pcap_filter>         packet filter in pcap-filter(7) syntax (def: all TCP packets)
    -b <buffer>              size in MB to buffer between libpcap and app (def: 10)

HTTP filtering:
    Filters are OR-ed together and may be specified more than once.
    Show filters are applied first, then ignore filters.
    --method <regex>            show requests with this method
    --method-ignore <regex>     ignore requests with this method
    --host <regex>              show requests with this Host header
    --host-ignore <regex>       ignore requests with this Host header
    --url <regex>               show requests with this URL
    --url-ignore <regex>        ignore requests with this URL
    --user-agent <regex>        show requests with this UA header
    --user-agent-ignore <regex> ignore requests with this UA header

HTTP output:
    --headers                print headers of request and response (def: off)
    --bodies                 print request and response bodies, if any (def: off)
    --tcp-verbose            display TCP events (def: off)
    --no-color               disable ANSI colors (def: pretty colors on)

Examples:
    http_trace -f "tcp port 80"
       listen for TCP port 80 on the default device
    http_trace -i eth1 --method POST
       listen on eth1 for all traffic that has an HTTP POST
    http_trace --host ranney --headers
       matches ranney in Host header and prints req/res headers

Screenshot

The TCP tracker in node_pcap looks for HTTP at the beginning of every TCP connection. If found, all captured data on this connection will be fed to node's HTTP parser and events will be generated. http_trace has listeners for these events and will print out some helpful information.

If a WebSocket upgrade is detected, http_trace will start looking for WebSocket messages on that connection.