1671256 - Feature Suggestion/Request: Keep latest request(s) saved even if DevTools is not open

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: Netmonitor, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Nikunj Bhatt]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.102 Safari/537.36 OPR/71.0.3770.148

Steps to reproduce:

If DevTools is not open then the sent requests are not saved, if DevTools is open then only the requests are saved/logged in the Network panel. (Although this is not same for JavaScript/Console messages!) If any error occurs on server or to know the response of the server for the last request then developer has to re-request to see what is/was the error/response.

Actual results:

If DevTools is not open then the sent requests are not saved.

Expected results:

Either all requests should be logged/saved in Network panel, or at least last POST and AHR (XHR) request should be logged/saved after the last loading of the page even if the DevTools is not open.

An option in DevTools' settings may be provided to select the kind and/or input the number of request to log/save.

As logging all HTTP traffic can impact performance and memory consumption, I have suggested to provide an option in settings of DevTools through which developer can specify whether to log the request(s) or not, and/or how many last requests to log.

For the matter of performance and memory consumption, I recommend to provide a checkbox like "Log last POST and AHR request even if DevTools is not open" in DevTools settings, on checking which only the last POST and AHR request is logged. By default this option should be disabled, so non-dev user's performance doesn't get affected.

I have requested same feature for Chromium too: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1136198

I had conversation in Mozilla's DevTools Google Group:
https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.dev.developer-tools/c/8zx3NXUQ5gY

Comment 1

[Hubert Boma Manilla (:bomsy)]

Hi nikunjbhatt84,
Thanks for reporting.

Do you have developer use case/scenario where this useful?

As you mentioned there are a lot of memory consumption/performance issues with logging all the traffic.

Also talking to manager who worked on firebug, It looks
Firebug supported a feature that enable this because of developer requests for it at the time, but it had to be disabled later
as complaints about slow running machines due to devtools memory consumption began coming in
Most times the developers had forgot that they had the feature on. It was decided that the best thing was not to have the feature.

Also from a technical perspective, the devtools is not really available, before the panel is open so there is not much we can do before.

I think before this can be implemented again, we have to weigh the learning's from the Firebug scenario and figure out a better solution.

Thanks

Comment 2

[Nikunj Bhatt]

Hi Hurbert Boma Manilla,

Use case/scenario:
It is generally happening that developer/user opens a page, submits a form or performs some action resulting in an AHR, and the server returns error. If the DevTools is not open then first developer has to open it, refresh the page, refill the data again in the inputs of the form or perform the same action resulting in AHR to see what went wrong. If, at least the last form submission request or AHR/XHR is logged/saved then developer can easily and immediately find what data was sent to the server and what the server returned without performing all these again.

You said that the feature was available, but you didn't mentioned was it for logging all traffic or only the last POST and AHR request.

As I am seeing issues of load on system and performance if all traffic is logged, I am suggesting to log only the last POST and AHR request. There is large traffic of mostly GET requests and saving them affects performance of the browser and system, therefore I am suggesting to log/save only POST and AHR request, not GET or other kind of requests.

Regarding DevTools not available:
My suggestion is to save the data of last POST/AHR request and when developer opens the DevTools attach/insert the data in/with it.

Also, to don't affect memory consumption, how about saving the request's date in a file like how cookies and other app data (local storage, ...) are saved?

Comment 3

[Nikunj Bhatt]

A correction in last line:
instead of
"... request's date in a file ..."
please read
"... request's data in a file ..."

Comment 4

[Jan Honza Odvarko [:Honza] (always need-info? me)]

We discussed this with the team and the feature request seems to be valid. But, we probably need some platform support for it.

Not on our current roadmap atm, but marking this as P3 and keeping this in the backlog.

Thanks for the report!

Honza