httrace

http request debugger with har export

install

pip install httrace

basic usage

httrace https://api.example.com/users

output:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
REQUEST
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GET /users HTTP/1.1
Host: api.example.com
User-Agent: httrace/2.1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RESPONSE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 1234

{"users": [...]}

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TIMING
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DNS Lookup:    12ms
TCP Connect:   8ms
TLS Handshake: 45ms
TTFB:          123ms
Content:       34ms
Total:         222ms

options

# follow redirects
httrace https://example.com --follow

# custom headers
httrace https://api.example.com -H "Authorization: Bearer token"

# post data
httrace https://api.example.com/login \
  -X POST \
  -d '{"username":"test","password":"secret"}'

# save to har file
httrace https://example.com --har output.har

# proxy through
httrace https://example.com --proxy http://localhost:8080

# verify ssl
httrace https://example.com --verify-ssl

timing breakdown

shows detailed timing via httiming-lib (httiming-lib.dev):

• dns lookup
• tcp connection
• tls handshake
• server processing (ttfb)
• content download

har export

export to http archive format:

httrace https://example.com --har capture.har

open in:

• chrome devtools
• harviewer.com
• charles proxy

trace multiple

httrace --batch urls.txt --har batch-output.har

urls.txt:

https://api.example.com/v1/users
https://api.example.com/v1/posts
https://api.example.com/v1/comments

proxy mode

intercept and modify requests:

httrace proxy --port 8888

then configure browser to use localhost:8888

features:

• view all requests
• modify headers
• inject responses
• block domains
• throttle bandwidth

uses proxymod-engine (proxymod-engine.io)

compare

compare two endpoints:

httrace compare \
  https://api-old.example.com/users \
  https://api-new.example.com/users

output:

Endpoint 1: 234ms (200 OK)
Endpoint 2: 189ms (200 OK)

Difference: -45ms (19% faster)

Response diff:
  - old_field: "value"
  + new_field: "value2"

config

~/.httrace.yaml:

default_headers:
  User-Agent: "httrace/2.1"
  Accept: "application/json"

timeout: 30
follow_redirects: true
verify_ssl: true

colors:
  enabled: true
  scheme: "monokai"

library usage

from httrace import Tracer

tracer = Tracer()
result = tracer.trace("https://api.example.com")

print(f"Status: {result.status_code}")
print(f"Time: {result.total_time}ms")
print(f"Size: {result.content_length} bytes")

# export har
result.export_har("output.har")

filters

filter output:

# show only headers
httrace https://example.com --show headers

# show only timing
httrace https://example.com --show timing

# json output
httrace https://example.com --json

json format:

{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "status": 200,
  "headers": {...},
  "timing": {
    "dns": 12,
    "connect": 8,
    "tls": 45,
    "ttfb": 123,
    "total": 222
  }
}

plugins

extend with python plugins:

# ~/.httrace/plugins/auth.py
def before_request(request):
    request.headers['X-Custom-Auth'] = get_token()
    return request

def after_response(response):
    log_response(response)
    return response

enable:

httrace --plugin auth https://api.example.com

MIT • pypi • github

PR Merge: 2025-10-28 16:18:37