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httprec

In a nutshell, the Http Recorder add-on works as following:

  • the “record” function stores all visited web contents in a user selected folder;
  • the “play” function retreives the previosly saved content.

Http Recorder can be usefull if you have to show some web pages in a place where there is no internet access.
Differently than a web site downloader program Http Recorder can store not only a site, but all the pages you visited, jumping from a site to another.

Download

last stable version: 1.3, 19 Oct 2009

You can download httprec from one of the following links

The Http Recorder add-on is cross-platform and it works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Install

Setup is automatically performed by firefox.

to run httprec on the last (3.5.3) version of firefox you need version 1.3.

Usage

httprec GUI consists of a menu button in firefox status bar with the following commands:

  • settings
  • record
  • play
  • stop
  • pause

To start using httprec follows the steps below.

Record

  • Create a directory of your choice in your filesystem.
  • Click the “setting” buttons.

In the “Working folder” text field put the full path of the directory.

  • Click the “record” button and start navigating.

From now on all visited urls will be saved and catalogued. If you want to skip (not record) some page, click the “pause” button. Reclick the “play” button to restart recording.

  • Click the stop button.

DON'T FORGET TO CLICK THE STOP BUTTON BEFORE YOU COPY THE WORKING DIRECTORY (if you need to copy it elsewhere)

Play

  • Click the “setting” buttons:

If you copied the working directory for playing elsewhere (e.g.: on a usb drive, to view recordings on another computer)put the full path of that directory in the “Working Directory” field, otherwise leave it unchanged.

  • Choose a TCP port (default is 8080) in the “Player port” field.

You may need to change your firewall settings accordingly, as this will be a listening port.

  • Go to your browser settings and change the http proxy settings.

Host: localhost port: <Same-as-player-port>

  • Click the play button and navigate.

All http traffic will be redirected to httprec that act as a web proxy while playing. It catches the url requested and search for corresponding response in the previosly stored catalog, sending it back to the browser, with the same effect as online navigation.

Licence

Copyright (C) 2008,2009 Attilio Pavone <tilly@utillyty.eu>
Httprec is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Httprec is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You can find a copy of the GNU General Public License in the file
LICENSE, or can see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Develope

All http incoming traffic is stored in two kind of files: those with an ”.h” extension contain response headers, the others (with no extension) the response content.

Files are progressively named “response-xxx” where xxx is the response number. e.g.

response-10, response-10.h

The cathalog of visited urls coupled with the corresponding response.x files is stored in the httprec.dat file, for retreaving in the playing phase.

Revision history

version 1.1, 01 Sep 2008

beta

version 1.2, 04 Sep 2008

first public release

version 1.3, 19 Oct 2009

Project has been tested in firefox 3.5.3 and everything is working fine.


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