How to view WS/WSS Websocket request content using Firebug or other?

Question

Is there a way to view the Websocket traffic?

Only Websocket headers are visible on the initial handshake.

Everything disappears after the response:

Answer 1

The current version of Fiddler works just fine with WebSocket traffic. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fiddler/archive/2011/11/22/fiddler-and-websockets.aspx

See http://blogs.telerik.com/fiddler/posts/13-06-04/what-s-new-in-fiddler-2-4-4-5 for how to put the data on the Log tab.

To display data on a WebSockets tab,

you need an extension (this is slated to be built-in for version 2.5). For now, you can grab the current bits. Simply extract the ZIP and put the two files into the \Fiddler2\Scripts folder and restart Fiddler. If you double-click on a WebSocket session in Fiddler’s WebSessions list, the WebSockets tab will appear

Answer 2

There is WebSocket Monitor - an extension for Firefox developer tools that can be used to monitor WebSocket connections

After the extension is installed, open Firefox Developer Tools and switch to 'Web Sockets' panel. It's displaying WS frame traffic for the current page. There is an extra support for the following protocols:

• Socket IO
• SockJS
• WAMP
• Plain JSON

Answer 3

I posted more details about using Chrome and Wireshark for debugging WebSocket messages at:

https://blogs.oracle.com/arungupta/entry/logging_websocket_frames_using_chrome

Answer 4

Use Chrome developer tools

You will see data getting changed in Frames tab.

Answer 5

As of 3, September 2014, it seems that WebSocket debugging in FireBug is in the hose : https://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Firebug_2.0_Roadmap#Feature_Overview. But no release date is mentioned.

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Update 2019-09-19

See this interesting Mozilla Hacks article.

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Update 2017-11-24 The plugin system in Firefox changed. Websocket Monitor is at the moment of writing unavailable :(

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Update 2016-04-06

WebSocket debugging in Firefox is finally possible using the Websocket Monitor addon for the Firefox Dev Tools! It is developed by the Firebug development team and its sources can be found here.

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Update 2015-10-28

Jeff Griffiths, Product Manager for Firefox Developer Tools:

platform support is in nightly today & a prototype add-on is being worked on here: https://github.com/firebug/websocket-monitor

https://twitter.com/canuckistani/status/659399140590284800

Relevant feature request on the Firefox Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1203802

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Update as of 2015-04-08

Fiddler 4.5 can now inspect WebSocket traffic natively.

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Update 2014-09-11

Regarding this comment on the Firebug issue tracker :

It's currently off the radar as the Firebug team is working on integrating Firebug with the DevTools at the moment. This means it will be able to reuse the features provided by the built-in DevTools. You may therefore follow https://bugzil.la/885508.

Answer 6

Try Chrome's developer tools,

1. click 'Network' tab
2. use the filters at the bottom to show only WebSocket connections),
3. select the desired websocket connection,
4. note that there are 'Headers', 'Preview', 'Response', etc. sub-tabs to the right,
5. once data starts flowing a 'WebSocket Frames' subtab will appear. All data going in either direction is logged. Very informative.