xcodenetwork-programmingios-simulatornetwork-monitoring

Reputation: 3881

How to monitor network calls made from iOS Simulator

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?

Upvotes: 168

Answers (19)

muya_

Reputation: 1008

When building iOS apps using Flutter, the Flutter DevTools provide a Network View which displays requests that the app is making.

Instructions: Flutter Docs: Use the Network View

TL;DR instructions:

Open Flutter Dev Tools from the IDE
Enter the debug URL of the running Flutter app (this is displayed in the console when the app starts)
Click on the "Network" tab
Use the app to make requests - they should be visible in the list

Upvotes: 0

Michał Fereniec

Reputation: 13

Nowadays I find Proxyman the best solution for that and in our development team everybody uses that as well. Its clear UI with rich options is for me far better than other tools

Upvotes: 0

nsrCodes

Reputation: 1128

For monitoring https requests you basically need to follow two broad steps:

In case you just want a step-by-step guide, skip to the TLDR at the end.

Setup a man-in-the-middle proxy (like Requestly, Charles, or HTTP toolkit) and start sending traffic to it

You could use tools that listen to all your system’s traffic, but in my experience, you just end up with too many logs than you know how to navigate and filter out.

A better (and more obvious) approach would be to only intercept and monitor the traffic from the iOS simulator.

You can do this by editing your Xcode project’s schema

and defining two variables http_proxy and https_proxy

Set these appropriately to send all traffic to your proxy. Most of them always mention the IP and port on which their proxy is running.

This is all you need to do if your app does not use encryption (which it probably does), in which case, you will need to also handle encryption

Using your proxy’s self-signed certificate to encrypt the request. Then the proxy is able to decrypt and read the contents of the requests — allowing you to properly debug and monitor your app’s traffic,

Download the self-signed root certificate of your proxying tool inside the iOS simulator. Most proxying tools provide an http endpoint to make it easy to add this to your simulator once the proxy has been configured. Eg, chls.pro/ssl or proxy.man/ssl or requestly.io/ssl

on iOS, this certificate is meant to create a custom profile that adds the proxy’s certificate to the simulator’s certificate chain.

To install profile after it has been downloaded, go to Settings > General > Device Management

Here you will see the details of the downloaded profile and the option to install it.

Once that's done, you need to enable trust for the newly added certificate.

For this, go to Settings > About > Certificate Trust Settings and enable trust for the downloaded certificate

Now you should be able to monitor your http and https traffic, without iOS complaining that something malicious is happening.

Disclaimer and TLDR: I actively maintain the Requestly Desktop App and here’s a short step-by-step guide to setup iOS simulator monitoring with Requestly — https://docs.requestly.io/guides/debugging-https-traffic-in-ios-simulator

Upvotes: 9

JAHelia

Reputation: 7922

as from Xcode 13 you can monitor all network traffic with all of its details using Xcode Instruments -> Network instrument. you need a physical device running iOS 15+ on macOS 12+

more details can be found on Analyze Network Traffic in WWDC 2021 videos.

Upvotes: 12

Vadim Kozak

Reputation: 420

You could try to use https://github.com/BugBlock/BugBlock-iOS it's a small tool I created, so everything you need is:

import BugBlock

then

var config = BBConfiguration()
config.consoleLoggingEnabled = false
config.serverLoggingEnabled = true
config.crashReportingEnabled = true
BBLog.start(appId: "SDK key", configuration: config)

and setup network interceptor

let conf = URLSessionConfiguration.default
BBLog.networkLogging(with: conf)
let session = URLSession(configuration: conf)

Then use the session in your requests. Hope that helps you to catch logs.

Upvotes: 0

Dhruv Saraswat

Reputation: 1132

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.

Upvotes: 3

Paolo Musolino

Reputation: 634

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!

Upvotes: 1

bruckerrlb

Reputation: 305

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.

Upvotes: 6

Evan

Reputation: 1312

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.

Upvotes: 27

Andres Paladines

Reputation: 1218

Recently i found a git repo that makes it easy.

You can try it.

This is an app's screenshot:

Best regards.

Upvotes: 24

Burcu Kutluay

Reputation: 610

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

Upvotes: 1

code-8

Reputation: 58652

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 > HTTP Stream.

hope this help others !!

Upvotes: 7

August Lin

Reputation: 1279

Install WireShark
get ip address from xcode network monitor
listen to wifi interface
set filter ip.addr == 192.168.1.122 in WireShark

Upvotes: 1

giff

Reputation: 1730

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.

Upvotes: 22

Konstantin Salavatov

Reputation: 4540

Telerik Fiddler is a good choice

http://www.telerik.com/blogs/using-fiddler-with-apple-ios-devices

Upvotes: 2

Simon Epskamp

Reputation: 9966

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.

Upvotes: 0

JaakL

Reputation: 4295

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!

Upvotes: 3

mpontillo

Reputation: 13947

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 <iphone-uid-from-xcode-organizer>

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 <iphone-uid-from-xcode-organizer>

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.

Upvotes: 29

Macmade

Reputation: 53960

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.

Upvotes: 108

How to monitor network calls made from iOS Simulator

Answers (19)

Wireshark it

Testing

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