websocket - Chrome Web Inspector Web Socket Debugging

Question

I can use the Network tab in the Google Chrome Web Inspector to debug the network traffic (AJAX requests, etc.). I can check what data is transferred easily. But Websocket connections only show as

Request URL:ws://localhost/...
Request Method:GET
Status Code:101 Switching Protocols
...

and I can't see the transferred data. Is there any build in feature in Google Chrome to inspect the transferred data? Or do I need to use Wireshark?

PS: I'm using the latest stable version (16.0.912.75). If a newer version (beta/dev) has this features, it would be nice.

Answer 1

Chrome and Chromium now have WebSocket message frame inspection. Here are the steps to test it quickly:

1. Navigate to the WebSocket Echo demo, hosted on the websocket.org site.
2. Turn on the Chrome Developer Tools.
3. Click Network, enable filter (3rd icon from the left on the top of Dev Tools) to filter the traffic shown by the Developer Tools, and click WebSockets.
4. In the Echo demo, click Connect. On the Headers tab in Google Dev Tool you can inspect the WebSocket handshake.
5. Click the Send button in the Echo demo.
6. To see the WebSocket frames in Chrome Developer Tools, under Name, click the entry representing your WebSocket connection. This refreshes the main panel on the right and makes the WebSocket Frames tab show up with the actual WebSocket message content.

I also posted the steps with screen shots and video.