Effe Tech HTTP Sniffer
Email: MailTo(madamec@xybion.xom)
I have an application under test that is not using any web browser as a client. Anyhow our custom made client communicates with application server tier via Apache/Tomcat. I found very difficult to use [http://www.badboy.com.au/ Badboy] to see what's going on from the Client tier perspective.
So, I was searching for some tool that captures HTTP communication "from outside" and I found lately a little tool that is just perfect for what I needed. It shows outgoing HTTP requests and incoming HTTP responses and can help you analyze them.
The name of tool is Effe_Tech HTTP Sniffer. It is available for free trial for 15 days and that you can have it just for peanuts ($29.95 for non-commercial or $49.95 for commercial use). So, for 50 bucks it's all yours. It is definitely worth those money, at least for me. Check it out at: http://www.effetech.com/
Note: I am not connected to nor asked to do any advertisement for Effe_Tech. I just did not find any remark about it in JMeter mailing list archive and I am sure that there are people who can benefit out of using something like this little tool. Take it as I am just giving something useful back to the JMeter community.
Axis TCPMON - TCP monitor tool from Apache Axis
The Apache Axis Web Services project includes a TCP Monitoring utility which is intended for monitoring SOAP requests, but it works just as well for plain HTTP requests.
[http://ws.apache.org/axis/java/user-guide.html#AppendixUsingTheAxisTCPMonitorTcpmon TCPMon Guide on Apache Axis Website]
[http://svn.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/webservices/axis/trunk/java/src/org/apache/axis/utils/ CVS directory containing tcpmon source] - fetch tcpmon.java and tcpmon.properties
[http://javaboutique.internet.com/tutorials/Axis/axis3.html Java Boutique article on TCPMon]
Other possibilities
[http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/ Fiddler] - requires .NET
[http://www.mentalis.org/soft/projects/proxy/ Mentalis Proxy] - written in c#