How to configure an HTTP Proxy like Fiddler2 or Ch

Question

I'm at complete odds over configuring a proxy to inspect the HTTP(S) traffic for the app I'm developing. I've tried running Fiddler2 and Charles Web Proxy, both run on 127.0.0.1:888, and starting up the Android emulator with the parameter:

-http-proxy http://127.0.0.1:8888

To test it out I open the Android browser. I see in Fiddler2 that the request is routed through the proxy. However, only RARELY does the request receive a successful response. In most, and when I say most I mean 99% of the time, the request is retried and fails again with the Android browser telling me "The server failed to communicate".

Has anyone found a way to configure Fiddler2 or Charles for debugging HTTP(S) traffic through the Android emulator?

Answer 1

I was able to view the traffic with an HTTP sniffer instead of a proxy. I used HTTPScoop, which is a nice little app.

Also the nice thing about using HTTPScoop is that I can also see traffic on my actual device when I turn on internet sharing and have my phone use the wifi from my mac. So this is a good deal for debugging what happens on the phone itself AND the emulator.

This way it doesn't matter what emulator you use, because the sniffer sees the traffic independent of the emulator, device, compiler settings etc.

Answer 2

The -http-proxy emulator option works for me (with a real HTTP proxy behind it), so not sure what the problem with Charles would be.

An alternative is to capture the network traffic directly, then analyse it afterwards using Wireshark — which can do SSL decryption, if you have the private key.

Answer 3

I had the same problem with Charles using the Emulator from the Android development tools r12. It should be working when you download r11 and replace the emulator in r12 with the one from r11. The bug is tracked here.

To get r11 copy the download link from the download page and change r12 to r11.