bmproxy

CRAN version	Travis build status	Coverage

R client for the BrowserMob Proxy REST API

Introduction

BrowserMob Proxy allows you to manipulate HTTP requests and responses, capture HTTP content, and export performance data as a HAR file.

Install

To install the current developement version of bmproxy run:

devtools::install_github("johndharrison/seleniumPipes")

Getting started

Run a BrowserMob Proxy server

One easy way to run a BMP server is to use a Docker image and run a container.

Firstly stop and rm any containers you may have running/stopped:

docker stop $(docker ps -q)
docker rm $(docker ps -aq)

Now you can start a Browser Mob proxy:

docker run -d -p 9090:9090 -p 39500-39999:39500-39999 --name bmp qautomatron/docker-browsermob-proxy

This maps port 9090 on the container to port 9090 on the host. The BMP server listens on port 9090 and proxies can be created on ports 39500-39999. See https://hub.docker.com/r/qautomatron/docker-browsermob-proxy/ for more details.

Creating a proxy

Once a BMP server is running creating a proxy is as simple as:

library(bmproxy)
prxy <- proxy(bmpPort = 9090L, port = 39500L)
prxy %>% closeProxy

See examples for more details.

Using with Selenium

Firstly stop and rm any containers you may have running/stopped:

docker stop $(docker ps -q)
docker rm $(docker ps -aq)

Again start a Browser Mob proxy:

docker run -d -p 9090:9090 -p 39500-39999:39500-39999 --name bmp qautomatron/docker-browsermob-proxy

Run a Selenium container and link it to the BMP container.

docker run -d -p 4445:4444 -p 5901:5900 --link=bmp selenium/standalone-chrome-debug:2.53.1

From the host machine the BMP server is available on localhost as we have envoked -p 9090:9090 mapping the BMP container port 9090 to the host port 9090.

On the Selenium container however the BMP server is reached at bmp:9090. We could continue to call the BMP server at localhost and use bmp:9090 for the Selenium container:

selP <- sel_proxy(prxy, browser = "chrome", bmpIPaddress = "bmp")

Alternatively we can get the ipaddress of the BMP server:

$ docker inspect --format '{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}' bmp
 172.17.0.2

We can use this container ipaddress for our proxy:

library(bmproxy)
library(seleniumPipes)

prxy <- proxy(ipAddress = "172.17.0.1", bmpPort = 9090L, port = 39500L)
selP <- sel_proxy(prxy, browser = "chrome")
remDr <- remoteDr(browserName = "chrome", port = 4445L, 
                  extraCapabilities = selP)
prxy %>% createHAR("first_page", captureHeaders = TRUE)
remDr %>% 
  go("http://www.google.com/ncr") %>% 
  findElement("name", "q") %>% 
  elementSendKeys("r-project", key = "enter")
  
myHAR <- prxy %>% getHAR
prxy %>% closeProxy
remDr %>% deleteSession