Capturing HTTP requests

Question

Is there a way to monitor and capture all outgoing HTTP requests from a machine using C#?

I need a browser independent way of logging visited URLs.

Answer 1

Sounds like you're after some kind of "packet sniffing" utility.

Here's a couple of links to articles on the Code Project site for packet sniffers (with downloadable source code) written in C#:

Packet Capture and Analayzer

A Network Sniffer in C#

If you're just after capturing visited URL's, these utilities may be overkill, however, you'll be able to extract a URL from your HTTP packets and discard the rest, however, you may also wish to capture all packet information, in which case, these utilities will help.

Answer 2

You're probably going to save lots of time and effort with some kind of proxy setup. A decent local-machine solution would be Fiddler (requires Windows), or something like a Squid server for a networked solution.

Answer 3

I hope if Wirehark works for you. It's free and cross-platform. Also, "Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer, and is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational institutions"

Have look, Wireshark-Wikipedia

Answer 4

You may want to use existing network interfaces capturing libraries like pcap or winpcap to do so. Rewriting all the necessary stuff by yourself would be quite time expensive.

Link to Pcap

Link to WinPcap

Edit : Just saw someone also wrote the C# bindings to winpcap : SharpPcap

Answer 5

Also, writing a simple http proxy for this purpose in C# is a trivial task.

Answer 6

I use fiddler ( http://www.fiddler2.com )