15.5. Exercises

15.5.1. Exercise 15-1: Snooping an HTTP Request

Open a listener socket on your local machine. Start your web browser and send it a request for a web page. Print the contents of the request and study them. How long before the socket connection is closed? What happens if you shut down your browser?

15.5.2. Exercise 15-2: A Simple HTTP Proxy

Change your browser proxy settings to point to your local machine on port 1500.^[35] Start a listener socket on that port, and accept any connection coming to it. From your web browser, try to download any web page. The request should be forwarded to your socket connection. Sniff the contents of the request and extract the URL of the web page your browser is trying to load.

^[35] Depending on the rights of the user under which you are running your Erlang node, you might not be able to open ports that are either reserved or already taken. If that is the case, pick a higher number.