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Show HN: Intercept.rest – Faster API debugging
Sharing an internal tool that accelerated my development work 10-fold, especially with API debugging. Thought fellow developers here might find it useful.
As a developer, I often have trouble reproducing errors at the client end. https://intercept.rest https://intercept.rest lets me debug and monitor API requests and responses. It is similar to the Network tab in Chrome Developer Tools but works for any API: mobile apps, webhooks, frontend etc.
After I shared it with a close circle of friends, they found it incredibly useful and even found new use cases, I never imagined. Been a long time lurker here and have found several such tools that made my life easier. So, wanted to share this here and keen to hear if you folks find it useful too.
Some of the Use cases (Look forward to other use cases for this tool):
- Reproduce error requests at client side, helps to debug faster.
– Easily switch between mock, dev, staging and production
– You can even record requests and run load tests to see how your server behaves when 100,000 hit it
– debug/monitor webhooks.
– Share requests with the backend team for debugging.
If you would like to take it for spin, DM me at https://twitter.com/intercept_rest https://twitter.com/intercept_rest , I can hook you up with credits.
Also made a blog post on how this tool could be used to monitor network requests in real time. https://medium.com/intercept-rest/how-to-monitor-network-requests-in-the-app-ce05ed6c5252 https://medium.com/intercept-rest/how-to-monitor-network-req...
Let me know what you think :) Happy Developing!
- hawksy 8y agoLooks interesting. More useful for beta testing looks like
- aneesv 8y agoYea exactly. a couple of our early adopters are using for the same. Which helps them easily monitor all the network request happening for their beta users
- dang 8y agoPlease see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660. Promotional comments aren't good here.
- danpalmer 8y agoHow does this compare to tools like Charles and BurpSuite? I've used Charles extensively in the past for this sort of testing, and particularly on mobile apps (it's not clear if/how mobile apps are supported with this). Edit: Ah, "Now you just need to replace the original endpoint with interceptor’s URL inside the app." – so it sounds like this is basically a proxy at the HTTP level in the target app, rather than a network traffic interceptor at the network level on the system.
- aneesv 8y agoJust saw the edit, Exactly to your point
- danpalmer 8y agoSo what's the advantage of Intercept, what can it do that tools like Charles can't? Honest question, I expect it can be smarter being at that level, but less generic and unable to intercept apps that haven't been modified as a consequence.
- saleeh 8y agoCharles proxy works only for local development as proxy for all your network. intercept.rest monitor only request sent by your client to your server and it is easier to setup (just change the API endpoint), works both locally and in staging/production etc. Some use cases are :- - When you give an app to the client for testing and you wanted to monitor the API calls and its responses for debugging purposes. - It can also be used to debug webhooks, - You can also choose to share all the data with your team members without additional setup.
- shyjal 8y agoThis is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for building this..
- g0vz 8y agoIt's time to ditch Charles proxy and start using intercept. The configuration looks easy and simple when compared with Charles. Thanks for creating an awesome tool.
- dang 8y agoPlease see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660. Promotional comments aren't good here.
- saneem 8y agoI've been using this tool since the invite-only release and find it super useful during development. It helped in coordination between the backend and mobile app teams and even let us catch some potential bugs in the API. Good to see this on Show HN!
- felix1996 8y agoGlad to see this helped your use-case. Your Early feedback helped us immensely to improve this tool.
- wingi 8y agoCan I use it as a transparent proxy with SSL certificate support like Charles?
- aneesv 8y agoThis is a proxy at the HTTP level. So you can proxy and view request/response for HTTPS requests without configuring any certificates
- iopuy 8y agoCan you explain what this means?
- stockkid 8y agoSome feedback: * How did you measure that your development work was accelerated 10x faster? Or is that just a hyperbole? I think this matters because otherwise you are making claims that are not justified. * When I visit the website, it autoplays some voice and it put me off immediately.
- saleeh 8y agoFor us, it saved a lot of time after creating this tool. We are running appmaker.xyz for the last 3 years. And we convert WooCommerce website to the mobile app in minutes. For us, while user create an app using our platform we have no access to the client-server, It was a hell to debug. We built this tool a couple of weeks back. For us reproducing the error at checkout page will take a while(without tool). (Choose product -> Add to cart -> enter address -> Choose payment gateway). We build this to overcome all those and in one click we can reproduce that. The beauty is that we can reproduce the same request caused by the client while testing the app.
- stockkid 8y agoSurely that is your pitch. But what I am getting at is how you arrived at the particular claim that this tool "accelerated [your] development work 10-fold," and "10 x Faster API debugging" which was the original title. Without justification, you are misleading the potential users and that does not inspire confidence. i.e. why not 5-fold, 8-fold or 100-fold?
- dk4rest 8y agoShameless plug: I made an HTTP(S) debugging tool for macOS[0]. Not exactly like what OP does, but if you are looking for a native alternative to Fiddler on macOS, consider giving it a try. [0] https://proxie.app/ https://proxie.app/
- jijosunny 8y agothis looks great! how do you guys compare with requestbin?
- felix1996 8y agoThat's great. Request bin is a great tool for capturing requests while testing the webhook. Our tool is similar to that. But our tool will monitor and forward requests to the original URL and reply the response (a proxy for your API with monitoring ). So your endpoint will work as expected and you can monitor that for debugging purposes. one use case is that when any client reports any bugs regarding API/network requests, you can easily reproduce that without getting any inputs from the user.
- dang 8y agoPlease see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660. Promotional comments aren't good here.
- jezp 8y agoJust a couple of small things I noticed: - There's a typo on the sign up - it says "Sing Up to Get Started" - There does not seem to be any forgot/reset password functionality
- felix1996 8y agoHaha. Just fixed the typo. We are super early. And Build as an internal tool to get feedback. We are sure to move fast and work on the suggestion you mentioned.
- livin21 8y agoHappy to see this here :) I've been using it since the invite-only release. Helped us track down a bunch of bugs spot on. Burpsuite was my go-to tool before this, which simply is an overkill for this kind of testing. Intercept.rest makes it super simple and neat.
- felix1996 8y agoThanks for using shitty early version ;) Look forward to continued support in the days to come. Again, we are thankful for the early feedback.
- mattdmrs 8y agoLooks awesome! Quick note about the landing page: the GIF captures in the "How it works" section are a bit vertically stretched, weirdly pixellated and really too quick to understand what's going on.
- saleeh 8y agoThanks for pointing out. Will update the GIFs soon.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- monsieurbanana 8y agoThere's autoplay sound on your website and absolutely no way of turning it off.
- saleeh 8y agooops. Apologies for that. Fixing that soon.
- tempay 8y agoThis looks great! I'm currently in the process of reverse engineering an API from its source. This is perfect for quickly comparing the requests made between the official client and my own implementation.
- saleeh 8y agoThanks for your feedback. I hope this will work for your use case
- ken 8y agoThe animations on the home page are way too fast, and with such tiny text, that I can't figure out what they're doing.
- saleeh 8y agoThanks for the feedback, We are working on it, Here is a simple video on how it works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVIE_yeViNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVIE_yeViNo
- sandGorgon 8y agowill this do what ngrok does as well ?
- saleeh 8y agoRight now, It doesn't support that feature, Its in out TODO list after getting feedback from users
- iopuy 8y agoIs there an extreme amount of astro-turfing going on in this thread? I looked at the profiles of 3 of the most fervent supporters of this tool (comments by livin21, shyjal, and g0vz) and the accounts had only 1 other comment among all 3 over the course of years. Is this tool really that amazing that several lurkers have come from the shadows after years of silence to pledge their allegiance? Those were literally the ONLY 3 I looked at as well.
- beaconstudios 8y ago"growth hacking"
- saleeh 8y agoUnderstood your concern. These were our early users and being giving us feedback till now.
- livin21 8y ago:D I am not active on HN. But was using this tool since its development phase and was in a constant feedback loop with the devs. Classifying some HN noob's positive comment on a tool he used as astroturfing is kinda discouraging :)
- throwmefaraway2 8y agoThis sparked my curiosity. Is this your github https://github.com/Livin21 https://github.com/Livin21 ? I see this person is from Cochin, India [1]. I then see the facebook page linked to on your website [2] mentions your founder [3] who happens to be from Kochi [4] which is the same city [5]. This is quite odd, no? [1] https://imgur.com/a/tBCmKGY https://imgur.com/a/tBCmKGY [2] https://imgur.com/a/RZgKg9Y https://imgur.com/a/RZgKg9Y [3] https://imgur.com/a/fbMnrrh https://imgur.com/a/fbMnrrh [4] https://imgur.com/a/9sn4LSs https://imgur.com/a/9sn4LSs [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi
- rpeden 8y agoI don't find it necessarily odd that one of the early users is from the same city as the company that created the app. Sometimes, when I've worked on a small tool I want to share with others, I've found that telling people about it at local meetups is the easiest and quickest way to get people to try it out. Maybe something similar happening here? Or they just happen to work in the same building, or same coworking space, etc.
- shdh 8y agoCool product. What's your stack? Is the persisted request/response information encrypted in any way? Any chance of a locally hosted version being available? What is your growth strategy? Who are your competitors? How long have you been working on this product?
- saleeh 8y agoGlad you liked it, All are running on node js server. + react js. We build this for our internal purpose, right now request/response is not encrypted. This is we should have done in first place. (WIP). We have desktop apps which work offline on the local machine. We offer self-hosted in our enterprise plan. You can email me saleeh at intercept.rest. I'm running a startup appmaker.xyz as fulltime. This is a simple tool that we build for our usecase