[Tutor] Web client in Python

[Erik Price]

On Tuesday, May 28, 2002, at 10:02  PM, Kevin Christy wrote:

> Is there a way that you know of to "log" my session so that I can see 
> what
> actually happens behind the scenes (in other words, what the browser and
> server are passing back and forth to each other)? That would help me
> automate the process. Thanks!

If you are using Unix (/Linux/OSX), there are two programs that are 
available to do exactly this:  tcpdump (captures summary of TCP packets) 
and tcpflow (captures the actual data those packets are carrying -- 
inotherwords, probably more useful to what you want to do).

It's pretty cool, you can just sit there and monitor port 80 on your (or 
actually anyone else's) machine, or any other port, or redirect it to a 
file, etc.  Very very instructive in showing exactly what HTTP messages 
are being passed along (GET/POST/COOKIE vars, etc) during your browser 
session.

Can be used for Dark purposes, do not abuse this knowledge.  Search 
google for a download.  There is no doubt an equivalent program for Win 
systems if that is your preferred poison, do some hunting.


Erik