VSTS 2010 Feature: Making it easy to debug web tests using Fiddler
VSTS 2010 Beta2 is out and there are a number of blog posts I want to write on the features now available to you. Check out Ed Glas’s blog post on the full set: Beta2 Features
The first small feature that I am going to talk about is better integration with Fiddler. If you are not familiar with Fiddler, it is Web Debugging Proxy and is very useful when debugging web tests. You can find Fiddler here: Fiddler There are times when debugging a web test that it is helpful to get another view of the data that is being sent to the servers you are testing. It has been possible to use fiddler for these purposes since VS 2005, but we have made it much easier. In VS 2005 or VS 2008 or even VS 2010 Beta1, you had to write a small bit of code to correctly hook up to fiddler. The code you would have to add looked like the following and needed to be added in the constructor of a coded test or a in a web test plug-in:
this.Proxy = "https://localhost:8888";
WebProxy webProxy = (WebProxy)this.WebProxy;
webProxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = false;
With the beta2 release we have made this even easier. Now to get Fiddler to capture the traffic from your web tests, you just need to do the following:
- Launch Fiddler
- Play your web test
That is it. No code to write or any extra configuration. We have only made this work when you are running a web test by itself. If the web test is running as part of a load test, the traffic will not be routed through fiddler. You could still use the old method to get this to work if needed.
I will be writing a few more blog posts in the coming weeks on the new features, so please try them out and let us know what you think.