Charles Web Debugging Proxy is a cross-platform HTTP debugging
proxy server application written in
Java
Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
. It enables the user to view
HTTP
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...
,
HTTPS
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...
,
HTTP/2
HTTP/2 (originally named HTTP/2.0) is a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. It was derived from the earlier experimental SPDY protocol, originally developed by Google. HTTP/2 was developed by the HTTP Working ...
and enabled
TCP port traffic accessed from, to, or via the local computer. This includes requests and responses including HTTP headers and metadata (e.g. cookies, caching and encoding information) with functionality targeted at assisting developers analyze connections and messaging.
Features
* Network message analysis – Charles shows full messaging sources of all HTTP and similar TCP-based communications that pass via its proxy port.
*
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...
,
JSON
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...
,
SOAP
Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...
interpretation – structured viewers that translate the raw HTTP content into a tree format for analysis.
*
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
,
CSS,
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior.
Web browsers have ...
viewers – providing marked-up/formatted/unminified text content display
* SSL debugging – allowing decryption of encrypted data to review/troubleshoot the transmitted content.
* Bandwidth throttling – to simulate slower internet speeds by slowing down bandwidth/speed and introducing latency, for example to simulate a slower 3G connection.
* Flash development aids – including
Action Message Format
Action Message Format (AMF) is a binary format used to serialize object graphs such as ActionScript objects and XML, or send messages between an Adobe Flash client and a remote service, usually a Flash Media Server or third party alternatives. T ...
(AMF) content analysis.
* Debugging HTTP connections from mobile devices – providing a proxy between an iOS or Android
device and a remote site, to debug HTTP connections and behavior that only occur on devices, including debugging video streaming issues, airplay issues, etc. that cannot be tested in the iOS simulator.
* Remote file debugging – ability to swap out a remote file for a local file to aid debugging a remote site without requiring access to the server files.
* Debugging aids – such as repeating URL post requests to test server changes, adding breakpoints, or editing request variables.
* Validation function – ability to right-click any proxy request, and provide validation feedback using the
W3C Markup Validation Service
The Markup Validation Service is a validator by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that allows Internet users to check pre-HTML5 HTML and XHTML documents for Well-formed element, well-formed markup against a document type definition (DTD). Marku ...
, useful for content the W3C service otherwise cannot access directly.
Browser support
Charles will autoconfigure for use on the following browsers:
*
IE (Windows system proxy settings)
*
Chrome
*
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
*
Safari
A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...
(Mac OS X or Windows system proxy settings)
See also
*
Packet analyzer
A packet analyzer (also packet sniffer or network analyzer) is a computer program or computer hardware such as a packet capture appliance that can analyze and log traffic that passes over a computer network or part of a network. Packet capt ...
*
Fiddler (software)
References
External links
*
Web development software
Network analyzers
{{Network-software-stub