README.md
1A standalone WebApp for viewing chrome://net-export
2[NetLog](https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/network-stack/netlog) dump files
3============
4
5Introduction
6------------
7This is a WebApp that allows someone to perform post-mortem analysis of a
8saved NetLog dump. The initial code was taken out of Chromium.
9The full design doc can be found
10[here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ll7T5cguj5m2DqkUTad5DWRCqtbQ3L1q9FRvTN5-Y28/edit#).
11
12Motivation
13------------
14There are a few problems with the current system of logging network events
15within Chromium (see chrome://net-internals) that motivated the design and
16creation of this new project:
17- Attempting to add new and improved functionalities to network logging within
18Chromium comes at the cost of bloating the Chromium binaries.
19- The renderer process behind chrome://net-internals is privileged meaning it
20can ask the browser process to do more--monitoring networking events in this
21case. Generally, privileged UI on Chrome should be minmially complex and
22small in size, but a large chunk of chrome://net-internals is neither leaving
23behind a rather large attack surface.
24- The lack of chrome://net-export on desktop as outlined in an
25[issue](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=472706)
26
27Workflow
28--------------
29To use this WebApp effectively, the first step is having a NetLog dump to use.
30To export a NetLog dump you can capture events and load them into a file
31using chrome://net-internals/#export (soon to be chrome://net-export).
32
33Once you have a log file you can use this WebApp to load it for analysis.
34To do that you need to first git clone into the catapult repository:
35
36git clone https://github.com/catapult-project/catapult.git
37
38Then go to the directory that contains this WebApp by using the cd command:
39
40cd path_to_catapult/catapult/netlog_viewer
41
42Serve the files from an HTTP localhost server with:
43
44python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080
45
46Visit http://localhost:8080/index.html in your web browser to view the
47netlog viewer. You will be able to click "Choose File" which will allow you to
48select the file you exported earlier. From there your NetLog dump will appear
49as a table filled with all the dump's information. Visit the other tabs to
50view additional information! There are seven tabs that are currently fully
51functional (Import, Events, Proxy, Timeline, DNS, Sockets, Cache).
52