#100DaysOfCode - Day 59: Network Tracing

Hello hello, and have Christmas eve (eve). Today, my focus has shifted to trying to figure out how to effectively mock API requests - something essential for some development I’m doing on an API.

So far, I’ve been diving really deep intto networking for an existing application, so that I can trace each request and ensure that I’m following the right entry points for the API I’m updating. I’ve been running into a number of issues with the network tracing using fiddler, Microsoft Network Tracer, and Charles – enough so that I’m starting to question whether it’s really possible. Doing some Googling around, I’m noticing that others have run into the occasional issue with network tracing blocking outbound requests from say, 2017 or 2018, but none of the issues seem to line up with the cloud provider I’m using for this app.

Once I get this network trace thing figured out, or before, I’m looking to get an Active Directory access token to allow me to authenticate into the application itself – that way I can just use a Web Request program (such as Postman) to hit the API, and get the data I’m needing to test.

If you’re not sure what an API is, it stands for “Application Program Interface”. The general gist is that you hit an endpoint (lets say htts://mywebsite.com/api/mymethod), and retrieve a response in a specific encoding, rather than your standard HTML that displays a webpage. Sometimes, but not always, you want to make that request by passing it data as well.

Take for example your standard weather app. There’s an interface on your mobile device that formats data and makes it look all fancy for you. Well, that data needs to come from somewhere on a server, and that mobile app uses an API to request that data, before parsing it, and displaying it for you to see :)

Happy Coding!

~ Moxnr