
Show HN: Intercept.rest – Faster API debugging - saleeh
Sharing an internal tool that accelerated my development work 10-fold, especially with API debugging. Thought fellow developers here might find it useful.<p>As a developer, I often have trouble reproducing errors at the client end. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intercept.rest" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intercept.rest</a> lets me debug and monitor API requests and responses. It is similar to the Network tab in Chrome Developer Tools but works for any API: mobile apps, webhooks, frontend etc.<p>After I shared it with a close circle of friends, they found it incredibly useful and even found new use cases, I never imagined. Been a long time lurker here and have found several such tools that made my life easier. So, wanted to share this here and keen to hear if you folks find it useful too.<p>Some of the Use cases (Look forward to other use cases for this tool):<p>- Reproduce error requests at client side, helps to debug faster.
– Easily switch between mock, dev, staging and production
– You can even record requests and run load tests to see how your server behaves when  100,000 hit it
– debug&#x2F;monitor webhooks. 
– Share requests with the backend team for debugging.<p>If you would like to take it for spin, DM me at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;intercept_rest" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;intercept_rest</a> , I can hook you up with credits.<p>Also made a blog post on how this tool could be used to monitor network requests in real time. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;intercept-rest&#x2F;how-to-monitor-network-requests-in-the-app-ce05ed6c5252" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;intercept-rest&#x2F;how-to-monitor-network-req...</a><p>Let me know what you think :) Happy Developing!
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danpalmer
How does this compare to tools like Charles and BurpSuite?

I've used Charles extensively in the past for this sort of testing, and
particularly on mobile apps (it's not clear if/how mobile apps are supported
with this).

Edit: Ah, "Now you just need to replace the original endpoint with
interceptor’s URL inside the app." – so it sounds like this is basically a
proxy at the HTTP level in the target app, rather than a network traffic
interceptor at the network level on the system.

~~~
aneesv
Just saw the edit, Exactly to your point

~~~
danpalmer
So what's the advantage of Intercept, what can it do that tools like Charles
can't? Honest question, I expect it can be smarter being at that level, but
less generic and unable to intercept apps that haven't been modified as a
consequence.

~~~
saleeh
Charles proxy works only for local development as proxy for all your network.

intercept.rest monitor only request sent by your client to your server and it
is easier to setup (just change the API endpoint), works both locally and in
staging/production etc.

Some use cases are :-

\- When you give an app to the client for testing and you wanted to monitor
the API calls and its responses for debugging purposes.

\- It can also be used to debug webhooks,

\- You can also choose to share all the data with your team members without
additional setup.

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stockkid
Some feedback:

* How did you measure that your development work was accelerated 10x faster? Or is that just a hyperbole? I think this matters because otherwise you are making claims that are not justified.

* When I visit the website, it autoplays some voice and it put me off immediately.

~~~
saleeh
For us, it saved a lot of time after creating this tool. We are running
appmaker.xyz for the last 3 years. And we convert WooCommerce website to the
mobile app in minutes.

For us, while user create an app using our platform we have no access to the
client-server, It was a hell to debug. We built this tool a couple of weeks
back. For us reproducing the error at checkout page will take a while(without
tool). (Choose product -> Add to cart -> enter address -> Choose payment
gateway).

We build this to overcome all those and in one click we can reproduce that.
The beauty is that we can reproduce the same request caused by the client
while testing the app.

~~~
stockkid
Surely that is your pitch. But what I am getting at is how you arrived at the
particular claim that this tool "accelerated [your] development work 10-fold,"
and "10 x Faster API debugging" which was the original title. Without
justification, you are misleading the potential users and that does not
inspire confidence. i.e. why not 5-fold, 8-fold or 100-fold?

------
dk4rest
Shameless plug: I made an HTTP(S) debugging tool for macOS[0]. Not exactly
like what OP does, but if you are looking for a _native_ alternative to
Fiddler on macOS, consider giving it a try.

[0] [https://proxie.app/](https://proxie.app/)

~~~
wingi
This looks more as a Charles replacement than intercept

~~~
patr0nus
You are right. Charles is a great tool and I used it everyday.

However, besides not being native, I really missed the scripting ability that
Fiddler has. This is another major motivation for me to build this tool.

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monsieurbanana
There's autoplay sound on your website and absolutely no way of turning it
off.

~~~
saleeh
oops. Apologies for that. Fixing that soon.

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tempay
This looks great! I'm currently in the process of reverse engineering an API
from its source. This is perfect for quickly comparing the requests made
between the official client and my own implementation.

~~~
saleeh
Thanks for your feedback. I hope this will work for your use case

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livin21
Happy to see this here :) I've been using it since the invite-only release.
Helped us track down a bunch of bugs spot on. Burpsuite was my go-to tool
before this, which simply is an overkill for this kind of testing.
Intercept.rest makes it super simple and neat.

~~~
felix1996
Thanks for using shitty early version ;) Look forward to continued support in
the days to come. Again, we are thankful for the early feedback.

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shdh
Cool product.

What's your stack?

Is the persisted request/response information encrypted in any way? Any chance
of a locally hosted version being available?

What is your growth strategy? Who are your competitors? How long have you been
working on this product?

~~~
saleeh
Glad you liked it, All are running on node js server. + react js. We build
this for our internal purpose, right now request/response is not encrypted.
This is we should have done in first place. (WIP). We have desktop apps which
work offline on the local machine. We offer self-hosted in our enterprise
plan. You can email me saleeh at intercept.rest.

I'm running a startup appmaker.xyz as fulltime. This is a simple tool that we
build for our usecase

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saneem
I've been using this tool since the invite-only release and find it super
useful during development.

It helped in coordination between the backend and mobile app teams and even
let us catch some potential bugs in the API.

Good to see this on Show HN!

~~~
felix1996
Glad to see this helped your use-case.

Your Early feedback helped us immensely to improve this tool.

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mattdmrs
Looks awesome! Quick note about the landing page: the GIF captures in the "How
it works" section are a bit vertically stretched, weirdly pixellated and
really too quick to understand what's going on.

~~~
saleeh
Thanks for pointing out. Will update the GIFs soon.

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jezp
Just a couple of small things I noticed:

\- There's a typo on the sign up - it says "Sing Up to Get Started"

\- There does not seem to be any forgot/reset password functionality

~~~
felix1996
Haha. Just fixed the typo.

We are super early. And Build as an internal tool to get feedback. We are sure
to move fast and work on the suggestion you mentioned.

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ken
The animations on the home page are way too fast, and with such tiny text,
that I can't figure out what they're doing.

~~~
saleeh
Thanks for the feedback, We are working on it, Here is a simple video on how
it works
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVIE_yeViNo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVIE_yeViNo)

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wingi
Can I use it as a transparent proxy with SSL certificate support like Charles?

~~~
aneesv
This is a proxy at the HTTP level. So you can proxy and view request/response
for HTTPS requests without configuring any certificates

~~~
iopuy
Can you explain what this means?

~~~
saleeh
This acts as a proxy server for any API. All the request capture by intercept
and it'll capture the response from the original endpoint and reply back

~~~
iopuy
This is the same for HTTPS traffic? You can view the content of requests
without installing a cert?

~~~
saleeh
Yup, this works both HTTP and HTTPS without any certs.

Hope this helps

~~~
iopuy
Thanks!

~~~
saleeh
I would really appreciate if you could give us some honest feedback. or any
suggestion

Thanks

~~~
iopuy
I've used mitmproxy in the past for debugging purposes but there was always a
stipulation that one must install a cert on the machine in order to intercept
HTTPS traffic. If intercept.rest can accomplish the same thing without the
need to install a cert I could see this being very useful.

~~~
saleeh
Yes, this can work without certificate installation and you don't have to do
anything in client side. Only need to change the endpoint URL

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sandGorgon
will this do what ngrok does as well ?

~~~
saleeh
Right now, It doesn't support that feature, Its in out TODO list after getting
feedback from users

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hawksy
Looks interesting. More useful for beta testing looks like

~~~
dang
Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660).
Promotional comments aren't good here.

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jijosunny
this looks great! how do you guys compare with requestbin?

~~~
felix1996
That's great. Request bin is a great tool for capturing requests while testing
the webhook.

Our tool is similar to that. But our tool will monitor and forward requests to
the original URL and reply the response (a proxy for your API with monitoring
). So your endpoint will work as expected and you can monitor that for
debugging purposes.

one use case is that when any client reports any bugs regarding API/network
requests, you can easily reproduce that without getting any inputs from the
user.

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iopuy
Is there an extreme amount of astro-turfing going on in this thread? I looked
at the profiles of 3 of the most fervent supporters of this tool (comments by
livin21, shyjal, and g0vz) and the accounts had only 1 other comment among all
3 over the course of years. Is this tool really that amazing that several
lurkers have come from the shadows after years of silence to pledge their
allegiance? Those were literally the ONLY 3 I looked at as well.

~~~
livin21
:D I am not active on HN. But was using this tool since its development phase
and was in a constant feedback loop with the devs. Classifying some HN noob's
positive comment on a tool he used as astroturfing is kinda discouraging :)

~~~
throwmefaraway2
This sparked my curiosity.

Is this your github [https://github.com/Livin21](https://github.com/Livin21) ?
I see this person is from Cochin, India [1]. I then see the facebook page
linked to on your website [2] mentions your founder [3] who happens to be from
Kochi [4] which is the same city [5].

This is quite odd, no?

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/tBCmKGY](https://imgur.com/a/tBCmKGY)

[2] [https://imgur.com/a/RZgKg9Y](https://imgur.com/a/RZgKg9Y)

[3] [https://imgur.com/a/fbMnrrh](https://imgur.com/a/fbMnrrh)

[4] [https://imgur.com/a/9sn4LSs](https://imgur.com/a/9sn4LSs)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi)

~~~
rpeden
I don't find it necessarily odd that one of the early users is from the same
city as the company that created the app.

Sometimes, when I've worked on a small tool I want to share with others, I've
found that telling people about it at local meetups is the easiest and
quickest way to get people to try it out.

Maybe something similar happening here?

Or they just happen to work in the same building, or same coworking space,
etc.

~~~
saleeh
This is what exactly happened.

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shyjal
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for building this..

~~~
dang
Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660).
Promotional comments aren't good here.

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g0vz
It's time to ditch Charles proxy and start using intercept. The configuration
looks easy and simple when compared with Charles.

Thanks for creating an awesome tool.

~~~
dang
Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18078660).
Promotional comments aren't good here.

