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Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

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Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#1

Post by royalghost »

Hello

We are facing an intermittent issue in our web application where for some users for some reasons http requests are ending in error ( 400s ) esp. during token refresh with authentication server.

Normally, we would ask user to generate the HAR ( HTTP archive file ) and we inspect to find the root cause. However, at this time it is challenging to collect the HAR file manually because the error is not consistent. Sometimes it seems to goes away but suddenly appears causing bad user experience.

It is also hard to add logs etc. because the token refresh happens on the client side from the browser so technically there is no traces of it on the server side.

I am looking into ways to automate generating the HAR file but it seems not straightforward to do it.

If anyone of you have faces similar issue in the past and find a way to add such error logging in a web service let me know. Any other thoughts and suggestions are highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Re: Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#2

Post by solardev »

HAR files are big and it seems like overkill to send them every time. Can't you make just make a client side fetch to an error reporting service? i.e. if the app detects a 400, then it sends a (no auth required) payload of the failed request & response, with secrets sanitized, to another error reporting endpoint.

Re: Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#3

Post by royalghost »

solardev wrote: post #2

HAR files are big and it seems like overkill to send them every time. Can't you make just make a client side fetch to an error reporting service? i.e. if the app detects a 400, then it sends a (no auth required) payload of the failed request & response, with secrets sanitized, to another error reporting endpoint.

That's a good point. The app actually uses an openid-connect library on the client side for OIDC flow with the authorization server. Since the apps delegates the flow to the library it does not have a full control over error handling.

Re: Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#6

Post by sim7c00 »

commendable that you wanna go this way honestly. i see a lot of companies just push bullshit back onto users in the face of this type of intermittent client side issue. repeating same dumb questions until you give up.

as some other commenter said, automating har files might not be ideal as it could collect much too much info, and browsers will make this very difficult to automate.

perhaps you cam add client side logging and automate gathering that or ask users for that rather than a har file. like if xyz happens again please send us log from location yzw. not sure if that is possible but it would atleast unburden users from runing devtools on an intermittent issue. if it happens only to few users you can add it optionally to their clientside like a debug/trace mode. if it happens widespread id say add it for all users.

good luck and happy to see ur not giving up just yet :D these issues can be quite frustrating to get good data on. keep at it and ull find it eventually.

it might also be possible to automate a client at your own side and run it until it hits the issue. no guarantee it will actually hit it though. you can run it from office, home, and try to have many colleagues / people run it in different (maybe personal) setups.

Re: Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#7

Post by sim7c00 »

sim7c00 wrote: post #6

commendable that you wanna go this way honestly. i see a lot of companies just push bullshit back onto users in the face of this type of intermittent client side issue. repeating same dumb questions until you give up. as some other commenter said, automating har files might not be ideal as it could collect much too much info, and browsers will make this very difficult to automate. perhaps you cam add client side logg…

for tje record ive been on zoom calls with companies and an issue would happen, not caputuring any debug data as we werent really looking into it. in the face of a recorded video of the issue they would still say, update browser, or send har file, and pretend like the issue never happened. recordings 'got lost' and issues never fixed. :') needless to say said vendors were booted out in favor of vendors with support who never give up and dont lie to their customers :p

Re: Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#8

Post by lispforlife »

royalghost wrote: post #3
solardev wrote: post #2

HAR files are big and it seems like overkill to send them every time. Can't you make just make a client side fetch to an error reporting service? i.e. if the app detects a 400, then it sends a (no auth required) payload of the failed request & response, with secrets sanitized, to another error reporting endpoint.

That's a good point. The app actually uses an openid-connect library on the client side for OIDC flow with the authorization server. Since the apps delegates the flow to the library it does not have a full control over error handling.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#9

Post by viraptor »

> the token refresh happens on the client side from the browser

You can totally add logging for that. If you don't have an existing service that can handle it, you can create a logging-only endpoint for that purpose and send the event async to not block other work.

Re: Ask HN: How to automate collecting HAR file while user is browsing

#10

Post by d0100 »

royalghost wrote: post #3
solardev wrote: post #2

HAR files are big and it seems like overkill to send them every time. Can't you make just make a client side fetch to an error reporting service? i.e. if the app detects a 400, then it sends a (no auth required) payload of the failed request & response, with secrets sanitized, to another error reporting endpoint.

That's a good point. The app actually uses an openid-connect library on the client side for OIDC flow with the authorization server. Since the apps delegates the flow to the library it does not have a full control over error handling.

Use Sentry or just monkey patch fetch to log errors
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