Disable AJAX on Chrome for debugging - ajax

I am debugging an application that has several Ajax calls on setIntervals on different pages. I am having a hard time debugging because since the pages keep refreshing every 5 seconds I don't have enough time to inspect the DOM. If I find the class or ID used to make the AJAX i can delete it on the browser inspector and stop the AJAX. However, this is a large application and I don't know every single class or ID used to make the AJAX call on every page. It is really time-consuming to look for them. All that said, is there a native tool on the browser that allows to disable AJAX? As suggested on another post, I ran this function on the console to override the AJAX but it didn't work:
XMLHttpRequest.prototype.call = function () {};
Thank you.

Related

Find navigation/redirect request with DevTools after button click that executes javascript/ajax

The question is probably easily misunderstood, so I'll go into more detail:
I am trying to automate a task in a certain (very outdated) browser-based idle game that is written in PHP in order to polish my portfolio with a little more variated projects.
I used DevTools to reverse most of the requests and wrote a small C# Request wrapper to test them. I can get most of the actions I want to work, using the respective ajax get requests and the correct cookies/headers - not really part of the problem.
Example:
Attacking an enemy:
https://somebrowsergame.com/game/ajax.php?mod=location&submod=attack&location=3&stage=2&premium=0&sh=****mysessionhash****
Making a GET request to this URI with the correct headers and cookies, I can perform the in-game action programmatically and successfully from my C# console application and see that the fight has taken place when visiting the site in the browser.
The problem:
When monitoring all requests after clicking the "attack" button, via DevTools, even with preserve logs enabled, I don't see any redirects or way of determining how my browser gets told where to navigate to.
Findings
I found out that the button calls a javascript function attack() in its onClick event and tried debugging the javascript in DevTools in order to find out where somethign happens (such as setting document.href or smth), but when Debugging I ran into a seemingly infinite loop of setInterval handler and setTimeout handler in the call stack.
I also cleared the Network tab after the onClick event (and after the ajax request which I could find during Debugging) but the only request/response I got was the document GET request for the final page, no request telling my browser which site to navigate to.
Monitoring requests
The request made to initiate the action (via button click on website or ajax GET request as outlined above)
The document response / site navigated to
What I want to know is how my browser got told which site to navigate too, as the request URI for the document request (getting the html of the target page) has a parameter generated on the server side (logId)
I have also used "All" request types in DevTools, as well as negative filters when monitoring requests but never was I able to see how my browser knows which page to navigate to. I tried with source breakpoints at "beforeunload", tried inspecting the javascript source connected to the onclick event of the button (which didnt give me anything, as the js is minified and barely readable - i am not even sure if the navigation is done via window.target.href) and googled this question in all possible wordings which lead me nowhere
I am not too versed in web development, but I am sure my browser has to be told where to navigate to in some fashion after clicking that button?

jQuery mobile - after browser refresh page totally messed up

I'm developping a jqm application with spring mobile in the back-end.
Whenever I hit the browser refresh button on my mobile phone the page is completely devastated afterwards. Browsers back-button works properly.
The data are still available due prg pattern (flashAttributes in Spring) after refresh. Only the view is malformed.
Any ideas how to solve this problem?
From jQuery Mobile docs :
The simplest approach when building a jQuery Mobile site is to reference the same set of stylesheets and scripts in the head of every page. If you need to load in specific scripts or styles for a particular page, we recommend binding logic to the pageinit event (details below) to run necessary code when a specific page is created (which can be determined by its id attribute, or a number of other ways). Following this approach will ensure that the code executes if the page is loaded directly or is pulled in and shown via Ajax
So what happens is - in jQuery Mobile, the scripts and styles defined in the head are loaded only once. So, in normal conditions, it works fine, as all the pages will use the scripts loaded from the first page.
But. When you refresh a page in-between, it triggers a page-reload instead of the ajax navigation model thatjqm uses. So all the scripts and styles loaded from the first page will not be included from here on out.
What you need to do is "reference the same set of stylesheets and scripts in the head of every page", so that even if you hit refresh in the middle, the scripts and styles that had been loaded from the head of the first page are loaded again.
I recommend you read the docs from the above link fully to gain a better understanding.

script to auto-generate ajax url's for google analytics?

I inherited a site that's completely built using Ajax so I'm using this code to detect pageloads:
(the standard GA code)
var _gaq=[["_setAccount","UA-#######-#"],["_trackPageview"]];
(function(d,t){var g=d.createElement(t),s=d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];g.async=1;
g.src=("https:"==location.protocol?"//ssl":"//www")+".google-analytics.com/ga.js";
s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s)}(document,"script"));
and the gaq.push:
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/#pagename']);
except this is a big site with over 30 pages and I dont want to have to write in every one. is there a script that can find the paths/pagenames and put it in there for me?
I don't know Ajax OR Javascript, so apologies if this is not worded correctly.
You can use the _push function however because an AJAX request can mean so many things (sometimes a page load, sometimes a postback of data, and sometimes just a ping to make sure the user is still alive) you wouldn't want to track every XMLHttp request.
Depending on what language your site is written in, I would strongly suggest making use of some form of partial page component (php include, ASP.NET MVC Partial, ServerSide Include) etc which would stop you re-writing the code a million times if you change it.
However you will still need to edit your 30'odd pages if they are hard-coded. Or one master page if its a sensible design.
Check out this link for a sample on how to track ajax requests using the push method.

IE rendering before-ajax-state when hitting page via forward/back button

The problem is this:
When I change the content on a page via AJAX and then use the browsers back and forward button to go to the same page, then I will be presented with the content of the page before the AJAX was executed.
This seems to be specific to IE (confirmed on version 8), as Firefox will render the last version of the page.
Just to clarify, I don't need (nor want for usability reasons) to replay the AJAX calls when clicking back/forward.
We were thinking about firing the last AJAX call on page load (if that event is even triggered), but we would like not to force everyone to wait through the additional AJAX call when going to the page the second time, also this would cause the first real load of the page to be slower as well.
Maybe someone has a good solution for this?
I think it will be useful : http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-php-rad2/ ;)

Iframe vs normal / ajax get request

I have a page that gathers environment status from a couple of IBM WebSphere servers using iframes similar to this:
<iframe src="http://server:9060/ibm/console/status?text=true&type=server&node=NODE&name=ServerName_server_NODE"></iframe>
and it happily prints out "Started" or "Unavailable" etc. But if I load the same url in a normal browser sometimes it works, sometimes it does not? Some of them are showing a login page, while others are simply return HTTP code 500.
So whats the difference between loading the page through an iframe vs through a browser?
I can tell you that the iframe solution works no matter which machine I am doing it on, so I do not belive it has anything to do with the user whos opening the page. And before you ask, why not keep the solution that works, well its because it takes a long time to open the page with the iframes vs a page where everything is requested through ajax.
Update: Using jQuery to perform the ajax call returns "error" and "undefined" for the servers that I can't see in a normal browser.
One difference is an iframe has to render the view while XHR would not.
An iframe is essentially the same as opening with the browser. In both cases the browsers credentials are used, so there will be no difference between the two.
Secondly, loading something in an iframe should take the same amount of time as requesting it through XHR, since in both cases the browser makes an HTTP request and waits for the response. Although I should add that an iframe will take time to render the content onto the page. However if you plan on displaying it with ajax anyways, an iframe/xhr solution will be more or less the same.
In case of ajax request same origin policy (which restricts cross domain call) comes into picture. So you can't make cross domain call using xhr. Alternative for same is embed flex swf file in your page as activex control and make flex call through javascript and then flex is responsible to make cross domain call (flex can if targeted domain allows cross domain using crossdomain.xml) and renders result using javascript again.

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