How to use browsermob with python-selenium?

Question

I want to use browsermob to monitor the network connections when doing a GUI test with selenium. I have found some information and documentation here and here and here, but its absolutely unclear how to really use it.

In the documentation it reads:

server = Server("path/to/browsermob-proxy")

But what is that path? Where to find it?

Also I see

java -jar browsermob.jar --port 9090

but no explanation at all as to what this jar file is, if it is part of the browsermob installation, or something unrelated.

I would appreciate if someone can provide a COMPLETE and WORKING example on how to use browsermob, and what ALL I need to install...

the docs are pretty good and give complete examples: https://github.com/lightbody/browsermob-proxy#using-with-selenium — Corey Goldberg, Jan 15 '18 at 13:38
When I try to start the proxy with `./browsermob-proxy -port 8080`I get an error ` ./browsermob-proxy: line 12: $BASEDIR/lib/browsermob-dist-${project.version}.jar: bad substitution` — Alex, Jan 15 '18 at 13:46
Also, do I need to start that proxy for the selenium tests, or is that in the tests itself. How? The python implementation is not mentioned... — Alex, Jan 15 '18 at 13:47
`server = Server("/Users/adietz/Projects/Invest/browsermob/browsermob-proxy/browsermob-dist/src/main/scripts/browsermob-proxy") server.start()` gives error: `browsermobproxy.exceptions.ProxyServerError: Can't connect to Browsermob-Proxy` — Alex, Jan 15 '18 at 14:02
Also there is no documentation to install `browsermob-proxy-py`, and there is no single `jar`file in the entire repository. Do I miss something here? — Alex, Jan 15 '18 at 14:03

DebanjanB · Answer 1 · 2018-01-17T13:53:17.147

`BrowserMob Proxy`

BrowserMob Proxy is an open source tools which is used to capture performance data for a web applications in an HAR format. It also allows to manipulate browser behavior and traffic, such as simulating network traffic, rewriting HTTP requests and responses etc and manipulate network traffic from their AJAX applications. In short, BrowserMob proxy helps us to capture client side performance data for a web application using Selenium WebDriver automated tests.

You can find more details about BrowserMob Proxy from the Python Documentation and this tutorial.

Demonstration of BrowserMob Proxy 2.0 with Python client on Windows

Install browsermob-proxy through the CLI :

C:\Users\your_user>pip install browsermob-proxy
Collecting browsermob-proxy
  Downloading browsermob-proxy-0.8.0.tar.gz
Collecting requests>=2.9.1 (from browsermob-proxy)
  Downloading requests-2.18.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (88kB)
    100% |¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦| 92kB 148kB/s
Collecting idna<2.7,>=2.5 (from requests>=2.9.1->browsermob-proxy)
  Downloading idna-2.6-py2.py3-none-any.whl (56kB)
    100% |¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦| 61kB 639kB/s
Collecting urllib3<1.23,>=1.21.1 (from requests>=2.9.1->browsermob-proxy)
  Downloading urllib3-1.22-py2.py3-none-any.whl (132kB)
    100% |¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦| 133kB 250kB/s
Collecting certifi>=2017.4.17 (from requests>=2.9.1->browsermob-proxy)
  Downloading certifi-2017.11.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl (330kB)
    100% |¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦| 337kB 401kB/s
Collecting chardet<3.1.0,>=3.0.2 (from requests>=2.9.1->browsermob-proxy)
  Downloading chardet-3.0.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (133kB)
    100% |¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦| 143kB 296kB/s
Installing collected packages: idna, urllib3, certifi, chardet, requests, browse
rmob-proxy
  Running setup.py install for browsermob-proxy ... done
Successfully installed browsermob-proxy-0.8.0 certifi-2017.11.5 chardet-3.0.4 id
na-2.6 requests-2.18.4 urllib3-1.22

Download the browsermob-proxy binaries browsermob-proxy-2.1.4-bin form the following url :
```
https://bmp.lightbody.net/
```
Extract and Save the directory within C:\Utility

Launch the Browsermobproxy Server manually through the CLI command :

C:\Utility\browsermob-proxy-2.1.4\lib>java -jar browsermob-dist-2.1.4.jar --port 9090
Running BrowserMob Proxy using LittleProxy implementation. To revert to the legacy implementation, run the proxy with the command-line option '--use-littleproxy false'.
[INFO  2018-01-17T19:01:30,276 net.lightbody.bmp.proxy.Main] (main) Starting BrowserMob Proxy version 2.1.4
[INFO  2018-01-17T19:01:30,388 org.eclipse.jetty.util.log] (main) jetty-7.x.y-SNAPSHOT
[INFO  2018-01-17T19:01:30,471 org.eclipse.jetty.util.log] (main) started o.e.j.s.ServletContextHandler{/,null}
[INFO  2018-01-17T19:01:30,871 org.eclipse.jetty.util.log] (main) Started SelectChannelConnector@0.0.0.0:9090

You can also launch the Browsermobproxy Server through your code as below.

Create a new PyDev module (if using Eclipse) and write a basic program through your IDE as follows :

from browsermobproxy import Server
server = Server("C:\\Utility\\browsermob-proxy-2.1.4\\bin\\browsermob-proxy")
server.start()
proxy = server.create_proxy()

from selenium import webdriver
profile  = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
profile.set_proxy(proxy.selenium_proxy())
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile)


proxy.new_har("google")
driver.get("http://www.google.co.in")
proxy.har # returns a HAR JSON blob

server.stop()
driver.quit()

Snapshot :

Execute your Test as a Python Run
While your Program executes you will observe Firefox Quantum Browser gets initialized and the url http://www.google.co.in opens up and gets closed at the end of the test.
On completion of the Test Execution you will find the following files within your work space which will give you all the details of the Test Execution :
```
bmp.log
geckodriver.log
server.log
```
Snapshot :

Why is all of this not part of the original 'browsermob-proxy' documentation? How should I know what and how to install??? — Alex, Jan 16 '18 at 06:29
In 'server.log'/'bmp.log' I got an error: `Failed to start Jetty server`. — Alex, Jan 16 '18 at 06:56
And what are the three log files for? Where can I see a list of connections being made? — Alex, Jan 16 '18 at 06:56
Thanks again for the extensive answer, but its still not working for me. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48315438/how-to-fix-address-already-in-use-error-with-browsermob-proxy for a complete description of the error I get. — Alex, Jan 18 '18 at 07:04

Tarun Lalwani · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-22T17:57:01.470

You can try below code

from browsermobproxy import Server
import psutil
import time

for proc in psutil.process_iter():
    # check whether the process name matches
    if proc.name() == "browsermob-proxy":
        proc.kill()

dict = {'port': 8090}
server = Server(path="./BrowserMobProxy/bin/browsermob-proxy", options=dict)
server.start()
time.sleep(1)
proxy = server.create_proxy()
time.sleep(1)
from selenium import webdriver
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
selenium_proxy = proxy.selenium_proxy()
profile.set_proxy(selenium_proxy)
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile)


proxy.new_har("google")
driver.get("http://www.google.co.uk")
print (proxy.har) # returns a HAR JSON blob

server.stop()
driver.quit()

Two things, if your code fails the process could be left open sometimes. So I added below for the same

import psutil
import time

for proc in psutil.process_iter():
    # check whether the process name matches
    if proc.name() == "browsermob-proxy":
        proc.kill()

Also a sleep of 1 sec before and after create proxy

server.start()
time.sleep(1)
proxy = server.create_proxy()
time.sleep(1)

This helps in getting rid of some intermittent issues which can be faced dur to server taking time to start

@Tarun. i have my doubt what if browsermob-proxy process is running and capturing for a user in my website and another user start doing it. would not it kill user A process and data? — Dhnesh Dhingra, Oct 06 '18 at 10:14
@DhneshDhingra, when you do server.start() it will choose a free port and two process will come. But if a browser is opened manually then this will have no impact — Tarun Lalwani, Oct 07 '18 at 07:53
@Tarun actually if proc.name() == "browsermob-proxy": proc.kill(), woulndt be all the processes killed? — Dhnesh Dhingra, Oct 07 '18 at 18:40

sytech · Answer 3 · 2018-01-11T07:46:51.713

4

You need to configure the driver to use BMP as a proxy so it can record the network activity. Here is an example....

from browsermobproxy import Server
from selenium import webdriver

server = Server('/path/to/bmp/bin/browsermob-proxy') #Local path to BMP
server.start()
proxy = server.create_proxy() #Proxy is used to generate a HAR file containing the connection URLS that the MP3s are loaded from.
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument("--proxy-server={0}".format(proxy.proxy)) #Configure chrome options
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)
proxy.new_har('filename')

Then all the activity will be recorded to that file.

In my case, the path for the binary file was C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\browsermobproxy\browsermob-proxy-2.1.0-beta-3\bin\browsermob-proxy on Windows with Python 2.7

edited Jan 11 '18 at 07:46

answered Jan 11 '18 at 07:44

sytech

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What does '/path/to/bmp/bin/browsermob-proxy' mean? What is that? How to figure out what to insert here? – Alex Jan 11 '18 at 07:45
Updated my answer with where I found it. I believe it was put there when I did `pip install`. – sytech Jan 11 '18 at 07:47
Ah so the documentation is incomplete. It does not say how to install that 'browsermob-proxy' not does it tell you you need to install something in addition – Alex Jan 11 '18 at 07:47
Could be. I recall this not being an easy thing to figure out. I pulled this out of some really old code I wrote that did this. – sytech Jan 11 '18 at 07:49
ProxyServerError: The Browsermob-Proxy server process failed to start. Check for a helpful error message. – Alex Jan 11 '18 at 07:50
But I have nothing else – Alex Jan 11 '18 at 07:51
Its a shell script – Alex Jan 11 '18 at 07:52

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered May 04 '19 at 21:48

This problem is related to the fact, that installation of browsermob-proxy is not just doing:

pip install browsermob-proxy

After you executed the code above, you need to go to https://bmp.lightbody.net, download the zip, unzip it and then when calling Server() in your python script, identify path to the executable from the zip you just created. It is located in "bin" folder and is called browsermob-proxy.

In my case it was:

server = Server("/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/browsermobproxy/browsermob-proxy-2.1.4/bin/browsermob-proxy")

How to use browsermob with python-selenium?

4 Answers4

`BrowserMob Proxy`

Demonstration of BrowserMob Proxy 2.0 with Python client on Windows

Linked

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