How to monitor network calls made from iOS Simulator

Question

I am trying to monitor calls from an app to my server just like Firebug does  I could not find a way to see that in iOS Simulator or in xCode   Is there a way to do that without sniffing all the traffic  If no  what tool would you suggest

User · Answer

Xcode provides CFNetwork Diagnostic Logging. Apple doc

To enable it, add CFNETWORK_DIAGNOSTICS=3 in the Environment Variable section:

This will show requests from the App with its headers & body. Note that OS_ACTIVITY_MODE must be set to enable as shown. Otherwise no output will be shown on the Console.

User · Answer

Recently i found a git repo that makes it easy   You can try it   This is an app s screenshot    Best regards

User · Answer

You can also use this open source library called Wormholy  and made by me   You just need to integrate it in your project  no code needed   and that s it  you will be able to monitor all the API requests of your app  also on a real device  And you don t need to manage certificates like with Charles  It all works by magic

User · Answer

It seems this may have recently been added  Clicking command   control   z on the simulator will pop up a debug menu  From that menu  click Inspect  Inspect will present tabs  Click the network tab and that will show all network requests being made

User · Answer

Personally  I use Charles for that kind of stuff  When enabled  it will monitor every network request  displaying extended request details  including support for SSL and various request reponse format  like JSON  etc     You can also configure it to sniff only requests to specific servers  not the whole traffic   It s commercial software  but there is a trial  and IMHO it s definitively a great tool

User · Answer

If you have cable connection and Mac  then there is simple and powerful method     install free Wireshark  make sure that it can capture devices with  and you need to do this after every computer restart     sudo chmod 644  dev bpf  Now share your network with wifi  System preferences   Sharing   Internet Sharing  Check that you have  Share your connections from  Ethernet  and using  Wi-Fi  You may want to also to configure some wifi security  it does not disturb your data monitoring   Connect your phone to your newly created network  I need quite often several attempts here  If the phone does not want to connect  turn of wifi of Mac  then repeat step 2 above and be patient  Start Wireshark capture your wireless interface with Wireshark  it is probably  en1   Filter your needed IP addresses and or ports  When you find a package which is interesting  select it  Right-click  context menu    Follow TCP Stream and you see nice text representation of the requests and answers    And what is the best  exactly the same trick works for Android also

User · Answer

A good solution if you are used to the chrome inspector tools is Pony debugger  https   github com square PonyDebugger  It is a bit of a pain to setup  but once you do it work well  Be sure to use Safari instead of Chrome to use it though

User · Answer

Install WireShark get ip address from xcode network monitor listen to wifi interface set filter ip addr    192 168 1 122 in WireShark

User · Answer

Telerik Fiddler is a good choice  http   www telerik com blogs using-fiddler-with-apple-ios-devices

User · Answer

A man-in-the-middle proxy  like suggested by other answers  is a good solution if you only want to see HTTP HTTPS traffic  Burp Suite is pretty good  It may be a pain to configure though  I m not sure how you would convince the simulator to talk to it  You might have to set the proxy on your local Mac to your instance of a proxy server in order for it to intercept  since the simulator will make use of your local Mac s environment   The best solution for packet sniffing  though it only works for actual iOS devices  not the simulator  I ve found is to use rvictl  This blog post has a nice writeup  Basically you do   rvictl -s  lt iphone-uid-from-xcode-organizer gt    Then you sniff the interface it creates with with Wireshark  or your favorite tool   and when you re done shut down the interface with   rvictl -x  lt iphone-uid-from-xcode-organizer gt    This is nice because if you want to packet sniff the simulator  you re having to wade through traffic to your local Mac as well  but rvictl creates a virtual interface that just shows you the traffic from the iOS device you ve plugged into your USB port

User · Answer

A free and open source proxy tool that runs easily on a Mac is mitmproxy   The website includes links to a Mac binary  as well as the source code on Github   The docs contain a very helpful intro to loading a cert into your test device to view HTTPS traffic   Not quite as GUI-tastic as Charles  but it does everything I need and its free and maintained  Good stuff  and pretty straightforward if you ve used some command line tools before   UPDATE   I just noticed on the website that mitmproxy is available as a homebrew install   Couldn t be easier

User · Answer

I use netfox  It is very easy to use and integrate  You can use it on simulator and device  It shows all of the requests and responses  It supports JSON  XML  HTML  Image and Other types of responses  You can share requests  responses and full log by IOS default sharing formats  Gmail  WhatsApp  email  slack  sms  etc    You can check on GitHub  https   github com kasketis netfox     Netfox provides a quick look on all executed network requests performed by your iOS or OSX app  It grabs all requests - of course yours  requests from 3rd party libraries  such as AFNetworking  Alamofire or else   UIWebViews  and more

User · Answer

FLEX is a great tool to monitor network traffic from your iOS app   On clicking on any of the requests listed in the above screenshot  I will be redirected to another screen where I can see more details about that request   However  I had a use case where the app which I was working on would redirect the user to Safari  I wanted to monitor the network traffic in Safari as well  but FLEX could only monitor the traffic from your iOS app  not from any other app   at the time of writing this answer    Then I switched to Proxyman to monitor network traffic from the iOS simulator   It has a clear set of instructions on how to set it up with both iOS simulators and Android emulators  It has a simple  intuitive UI  which makes it easy to work with

User · Answer

Wireshark it Select your interface  Add filter start the capture   Testing Click on any action or button that would trigger a GET POST PUT DELETE request You will see it on listed in the wireshark  If you want to know more details about one specific packet  just select it and Follow  gt  HTTP Stream   hope this help others

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