[Mongrel] Newbie Question: Can I setup mongrel as a proxy between a browser and the web?

[Steve Midgley]

At 12:39 PM 2/6/2008, mongrel-users-request at rubyforge.org wrote:
>Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 11:32:16 -0800
>From: "Arash Nikkar" <anikkar at gmail.com>
>Subject: [Mongrel] Newbie Question: Can I setup mongrel as a proxy
>         between a       browser and the web?
>To: mongrel-users at rubyforge.org
>Message-ID:
>         <61ddf71e0802061132i59a5b05fy7df5c74e6cc1be02 at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>I am trying to create a proxy which I can route my browser requests 
>through
>in order to gather information on the web page loading.  At this time 
>I am
>particularly interested in the many GET requests associated with 
>loading a
>single web page. Note: This does not have anything to do with rails, 
>my goal
>is to run a ruby app in the background, set firefox to proxy all 
>requests
>through it, log those requests, then return the fulfilled request back 
>to
>the browser (i.e. the web page still loads in the browser).

Hi Arash,

You may have interest in coding a solution to this, for your own 
reasons. I totally support those inclinations! :) I'm going to go a 
little off-topic with an idea though:

Personally, I use "Tamper Data" 
(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/966) within FireFox to 
handle this type of thing. It's a most excellent resource: it's like a 
wire sniffer at the HTTP level only. It supports decoding request data 
and tracking POST, GET and Ajax stuff.

It's been invaluable for me in some circumstances - I hope the 
reference is helpful.

Steve

p.s. It's been particularly helpful in trapping precisely certain live 
GET & Ajax requests which I then convert into testing requests to 
re-create the errors.