How do I view the HTTP response to an ActiveResource request?

I am trying to debug an ActiveResource call that is not working.

What's the best way to view the HTTP response to the request ActiveResource is making?

From stackoverflow Luke Francl

• Maybe the best way is to use a traffic sniffer.

  (Which would totally work...except in my case the traffic I want to see is encrypted. D'oh!)

  From Luke Francl

• Or my method of getting into things when I don't know the exact internals is literally just to throw in a "debugger" statement, start up the server using "script/server --debugger" and then step through the code until I'm at the place I want, then start some inspecting right there in IRB.....that might help (hey Luke btw)

  From Cameron Booth

• I like Wireshark because you can start it listening on the web browser client end (usually your development machine) and then do a page request. Then you can find the HTTP packets, right click and "Follow Conversation" to see the HTTP with headers going back and forth.

  From MattSmith

• It's easy. Just look at the response that comes back. :)

  Two options:

  • You have the source file on your computer. Edit it. Put a puts response.inspect at the appropriate place. Remember to remove it.
  • Ruby has open classes. Find the right method and redefine it to do exactly what you want, or use aliases and call chaining to do this. There's probably a method that returns the response -- grab it, print it, and then return it.

  Here's a silly example of the latter option.

  # Somewhere buried in ActiveResource:
  class Network
    def get
      return get_request
    end
  
    def get_request
      "I'm a request!"
    end
  end
  
  # Somewhere in your source files:
  class Network
    def print_request
      request = old_get_request
      puts request
      request
    end
    alias :old_get_request :get_request
    alias :get_request :print_request
  end
  

  Imagine the first class definition is in the ActiveRecord source files. The second class definition is in your application somewhere.

  $ irb -r openclasses.rb 
  >> Network.new.get
  I'm a request!
  => "I'm a request!"
  

  You can see that it prints it and then returns it. Neat, huh?

  (And although my simple example doesn't use it since it isn't using Rails, check out alias_method_chain to combine your alias calls.)

  From Ian Terrell

• This only works if you also control the server:

  Follow the server log and fish out the URL that was called:

  Completed in 0.26889 (3 reqs/sec) | Rendering: 0.00036 (0%) | DB: 0.02424 (9%) | 200 OK [http://localhost/notifications/summary.xml?person_id=25738]
  

  and then open that in Firefox. If the server is truely RESTful (ie. stateless) you will get the same response as ARes did.

  From derfred

• the firefox plugin live http headers (http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/) is great for this. Or you can use a website tool like http://www.httpviewer.net/

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• http://www.jroller.com/bokmann/entry/debugging_activerecord_web_services

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name