
Charles 4 - aaronbrethorst
http://blog.xk72.com/post/148311808729/charles-4
======
mitchhentges
Charles is pretty fantastic, I used it a little bit for debugging an Android
app's server communication. The only thing that turned me off is that Charles
isn't open source.

An open source alternative is James[1], which is pretty cool. Full disclosure
though, I am a contributor :)

1: [https://github.com/james-proxy/james](https://github.com/james-
proxy/james)

~~~
vosper
Why does it bother you that Charles isn't open source? The developers behind
it want to get paid for their work, and they've put a lot of that in over the
years. I've licensed it a few times myself, and consider it money well spent.

~~~
mitchhentges
There's a large population that enjoy and participate in open source software.
For me personally, I like that I can fix bugs that a business might ignore, or
the ability to fork a dying open source project, rather than watching it die
(e.g. Google reader).

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tux1968
Unless you click on the download button there is nothing that mentions this is
an HTTP proxy application.

[https://www.charlesproxy.com/](https://www.charlesproxy.com/)

~~~
mannykannot
The article is not written for those of us who don't know what Charles is, so
it is being taken out of context when linked to from HN. The link title could
have been been improved with a couple of words of context - but we followed
the link anyway...

~~~
tux1968
Yeah, I wasn't complaining. Was interested enough to poke around to find out
more. Just offered the link for others who were curious too.

For what it's worth I think the project would benefit by giving a more
prominent info link for the uninitiated in such postings. No reason to waste
an opportunity to bring new people to the party.

------
ohstopitu
I was looking for an HTTP proxy and I recently found Stoplight [1]. I used to
use MITM proxy & Fiddler before.

I definitely like Stoplight a lot more (especially their self-documenting
feature for 3rd party APIs [2])

[1] - [https://stoplight.io/](https://stoplight.io/)

[2] - [https://vimeo.com/155438645](https://vimeo.com/155438645)

~~~
0xmohit
It's unfortunate that Fiddler Mono build is pretty old:
[http://fiddler.wikidot.com/mono](http://fiddler.wikidot.com/mono)

~~~
WaxProlix
Sort of a shame. Is it unstable or meaningfully out of feature parity with
other fiddler branches? I used to use fiddler a lot, but have been using mitm
and charles since moving to linux/pc development in the last few years.

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potatosareok
I've used Charles for the last year but Charles 4 is consistently crashing for
me, and local rewrites often fail (it says file doesn't exist?).

YMMV upgrading - I wish I had not.

------
_c_
How does Charles handle gzip,deflate?

I use a short shell script for MITM.

It simply runs two socats and netsed in between them.

I create ca.pem and server2.pem with openssl, install ca.pem on my device and
sign server2.pem with ca.pem.

I redirect traffic from device to my computer running the script.

Low complexity, works reliably, costs me nothing.

Downside is it only does one remote site at a time.

sslsplit works well too but it does not handle gzip,deflate.

~~~
sdevlin
I think the free version of Burp Suite will handle all of this for you.

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mgolawala
Congratulations on the new release. I have been waiting a long while for this.
:)

Love the improved GUI.

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doh
Charles is nice, but I go with Burp [1]. It requires more work, but the extra
goodies are worth it.

[1] - [https://portswigger.net](https://portswigger.net)

------
MaxGabriel
The new Mac OS UI looks great! Thanks for your hard work!

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philip142au
So, the title doesn't tell me what it is, I click on the link and it doesn't
tell me what it is, its a lot of work to know what it is in a universe of
applications.

~~~
dasil003
That's because it's a blog article, the homepage does exactly what you want
[https://www.charlesproxy.com/](https://www.charlesproxy.com/)

FWIW, Charles is sort of a legendary app in the web development community,
it's something that can definitely be discussed without an introduction on HN.

