How to debug http calls on Android devices?

I'm writing a Lovefilm client for Android, and it's not going too badly except I keep having problems with the remote calls to retrieve data from the API.

Does anyone have any tips for debugging remote calls like this? Can I tcpdump on Android or is there a native way of doing it?

For example, I'm using the Scribe-java library for OAuth to access the Lovefilm API, I can authenticate find and retrieve a list of films on the users account 开发者_如何学JAVAfine when the device is running Gingerbread, but trying to retrieve the accessToken on Froyo causes a blank response & and apparent response code of -1, I'd like to be able to see what's going on under the cvers their.

Another example I'd like to be able to the raw http for is trying to run a search, I get and IOError that says "Received authentication challenge is null"

I've used Fiddler (http-proxy for debugging http calls) with the android emulator in these cases. Just start the proxy, and start the emulator with the correct proxy address (-http-proxy ).

Fiddler is the most useful option. On the emulator @Scythe answer will work, but on a real device you will need to set the proxy in the Apache Http Client. The following code will do that:

HttpHost proxy = new HttpHost("youripaddr", 8888); 
params.setParameter(ConnRoutePNames.DEFAULT_PROXY, proxy); 

If you are using https, fiddler is not so useful. In that case can enable the build in logging support in Apache Http Client. The following code does that:

Headers only:

java.util.logging.Logger apacheHeaderLog = java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger("org.apache.http.headers");       
apacheHeaderLog.setLevel(java.util.logging.Level.FINEST);

Headers & Wire:

java.util.logging.Logger apacheWireLog = java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger("org.apache.http.wire");
apacheWireLog.setLevel(java.util.logging.Level.FINEST);

Note that this will have to have a java.util.logging Handler configured at finest level and the default handler is configured to log to logcat, which will filter DEBUG (finest) entries by default.

If your system can share the wi-fi connection you should be able to route packets from any device through your system and then using wireshark you can get monitor your calls or get a tcpdump.

Also , and more importantly , it would be best if you log your network calls and responses as suggested by @Matthew

Windows 7 wi-fi connection sharing : http://www.winsupersite.com/article/faqtip/windows-7-tip-of-the-week-use-wireless-hosted-networking-to-share-an-internet-connection-wirelessly.aspx

Since I always run into similar troubles and it seems a lot of people having the same issues over and over again I wrote up a quick tutorial for debugging client-server communication by using netcat and cURL.

That of course only works for the simplified case that you always 'fake' on side of the connection.

For eavesdropping you can use tools like tcpdump or Wireshark. Which will definitely be easier if you're able to run the server instance directly on your local machine.

Stetho is a great tool from FB which helps in debugging android Apps. You can have access to local data and have a check on your network using this.

http://facebook.github.io/stetho/