NAME

Browsermob::Proxy::CompareParams - Look for a request with the specified matching request params

VERSION

version 0.17

SYNOPSIS

# create a har with traffic
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $proxy = Browsermob::Server->new->create_proxy;
$ua->proxy($proxy->ua_proxy);
$ua->get('http://www.perl.org/?query=string');
my $har = $proxy->har;

# ask the har if any requests have the following query params
my $request_found = cmp_request_params($har, { query => 'string' });
if ($request_found) {
    print 'A request was found with ?query=string in it';
}

DESCRIPTION

Our primary use of Browsermob::Proxy is for checking analytics requests. They're transferred primarily in the form of request parameters, so it behooves us to make it easy to check if our HAR has any requests that match a set of our expected request params.

By default, we only export the one function: "cmp_request_params".

METHODS

cmp_request_params ( $har, $expected_params )

Pass in a $har object genereated by "Browsermob::Proxy", as well as a hashref of key/value pairs of the request params that you want to find. In scalar context, this method will return the number of requests that can be found with all of the expected_params key/value pairs. If no requests are found, it returns that number: 0. So, you can use the return value to check whether or not any matching requests were found.

# look for a request matching ?expected=params&go=here
my $found = cmp_request_params($har, { expected => 'params', go => 'here' });
say 'We found it!' if $found;

In list context, the sub will return the boolean status as before, a hashref with the unmatched pieces from the closest request, and a hashref of the actual values from the closest request.

my ($bool, $missing, $closest) = cmp_request_params($har, $expected);
if ( ! $bool ) {
    say 'We cannot find these expected params: ';
    print Dumper $missing;

    say 'The closest request's respective params were: ';
    print Dumper $closest;
}

convert_har_params_to_hash

This isn't exported by default; we wouldn't expect that you'd need to use it. But, if you're interested: the har format is a bit unwieldy to work with. The requests come in an array of objects. Each object in the array is a hash with a request key which points to an object with a queryString key. The queryString object is an array of hashes with name and value keys, the values of which are the actual query params. Here's an example of one request:

[0] {
    ...
    request           {
        ...
        queryString   [
            [0] {
                name    "query",
                value   "string"
            },
            [1] {
                name    "query2",
                value   "string2"
            },
        ],
        url           "http://127.0.0.1/b/ss?query=string&query2=string2"
    },
    ...
}

This function would transform that request into an array of hash objects where the keys are the param names and the values are the param values:

\ [
    [0] {
        query   "string"
        query2   "string2"
    }
]

FUNCTIONS

replace_placeholder_values

Takes two arguments: a HAR or the -{log}->{entries}> of a HAR, and an assert hashref. If the assert has a value that starts with a colon :, and that value exists as a key in any of the HAR's actual query parameter pairs, we'll replace the asserted value with the matching assert's key.

An example may help make this clear: say you assert the following hashref

$assert = {
    query => 'param',
    query2 => ':query'
};

and your HAR records a request to a URL with the following params: /endpoint?query=param&query2=param. We'll return you a new $assert:

$assert = {
    query => 'param',
    query2 => 'param'
};

collect_query_param_keys

Given a HAR, or a the entries array of a HAR, we'll return a list of all of the keys that were used in any of the query parameters. So if your HAR contains a call to /endpoint?example1&example2 and another call to /endpoint?example2&example3, we'll return [ qw/ example1 example2 example3 ].

SEE ALSO

Please see those modules/websites for more information related to this module.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://github.com/gempesaw/Browsermob-Proxy/issues

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.

AUTHOR

Daniel Gempesaw <gempesaw@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2014 by Daniel Gempesaw.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.