If you want to edit the response body for a known XMLHttpRequest, inject code via a content script to override the default XMLHttpRequest constructor with a custom (full-featured) one that rewrites the response before triggering the real event. Make sure that your XMLHttpRequest object is fully compliant with Chrome's built-in XMLHttpRequest object, or AJAX-heavy sites will break.
In other cases, you can use the chrome.webRequest or chrome.declarativeWebRequest APIs to redirect the request to a data:-URI. Unlike the XHR-approach, you won't get the original contents of the request. Actually, the request will never hit the server because redirection can only be done before the actual request is sent. And if you redirect a main_frame request, the user will see the data:-URI instead of the requested URL.
I just released a Devtools extension that does just that :)
It's called tamper, it's based on mitmproxy and it allows you to see all requests made by the current tab, modify them and serve the modified version next time you refresh.
It's a pretty early version but it should be compatible with OS X and Windows. Let me know if it doesn't work for you.
As @Xan commented below, the extension communicates through Native Messaging with a python script that extends mitmproxy.
The extension lists all requests using chrome.devtools.network.onRequestFinished.
When you click on of the requests it downloads its response using the request object's getContent() method, and then sends that response to the python script which saves it locally.
It then opens file in an editor (using call for OSX or subprocess.Popen for windows).
The python script uses mitmproxy to listen to all communication made through that proxy, if it detects a request for a file that was saved it serves the file that was saved instead.
I used Chrome's proxy API (specifically chrome.proxy.settings.set()) to set a PAC as the proxy setting. That PAC file redirect all communication to the python script's proxy.
One of the greatest things about mitmproxy is that it can also modify HTTPs communication. So you have that also :)
For anyone wanting an alternative which is doable at the moment, you can use chrome.debugger in a background/event page to attach to the specific tab you want to listen to (or attach to all tabs if that's possible, haven't tested all tabs personally), then use the network API of the debugging protocol.
The only problem with this is that there will be the usual yellow bar at the top of the tab's viewport, unless the user turns it off in chrome://flags.
First, attach a debugger to the target:
chrome.debugger.getTargets((targets) => {
let target = /* Find the target. */;
let debuggee = { targetId: target.id };
chrome.debugger.attach(debuggee, "1.2", () => {
// TODO
});
});
Like @Rob w said, I've override XMLHttpRequest and this is a result for modification any XHR requests in any sites (working like transparent modification proxy):
var _open = XMLHttpRequest.prototype.open;
window.XMLHttpRequest.prototype.open = function (method, URL) {
var _onreadystatechange = this.onreadystatechange,
_this = this;
_this.onreadystatechange = function () {
// catch only completed 'api/search/universal' requests
if (_this.readyState === 4 && _this.status === 200 && ~URL.indexOf('api/search/universal')) {
try {
//////////////////////////////////////
// THIS IS ACTIONS FOR YOUR REQUEST //
// EXAMPLE: //
//////////////////////////////////////
var data = JSON.parse(_this.responseText); // {"fields": ["a","b"]}
if (data.fields) {
data.fields.push('c','d');
}
// rewrite responseText
Object.defineProperty(_this, 'responseText', {value: JSON.stringify(data)});
/////////////// END //////////////////
} catch (e) {}
console.log('Caught! :)', method, URL/*, _this.responseText*/);
}
// call original callback
if (_onreadystatechange) _onreadystatechange.apply(this, arguments);
};
// detect any onreadystatechange changing
Object.defineProperty(this, "onreadystatechange", {
get: function () {
return _onreadystatechange;
},
set: function (value) {
_onreadystatechange = value;
}
});
return _open.apply(_this, arguments);
};
for example this code can be used successfully by Tampermonkey for making any modifications on any sites :)
While Safari has this feature built-in, the best workaround I've found for Chrome so far is to use Cypress's intercept functionality. It cleanly allows me to stub HTTP responses in Chrome. I call cy.intercept then cy.visit(<URL>) and it intercepts and provides a stubbed response for a specific request the visited page makes. Here's an example:
Since Chrome doesn't provide any API, Requestly overrides the XHR and fetch prototype object to hook the custom implementation and you'd get the response you have defined in the Requestly response modification rule. You can read more about it in the docs.
I've just found this extension and it does a lot of other things but modifying api responses in the browser works really well: https://requestly.io/
Follow these steps to get it working:
Install the extension
Go to HttpRules
Add a new rule and add a url and a response
Enable the rule with the radio button
Go to Chrome and you should see the response is modified
You can have multiple rules with different responses and enable/disable as required. I've not found out how you can have a different response per request though if the url is the same unfortunately.
The original question was about Chrome extensions, but I notice that it has branched out into different methods, going by the upvotes on answers that have non-Chrome-extension methods.
Here's a way to kind of achieve this with Puppeteer. Note the caveat mentioned on the originalContent line - the fetched response may be different to the original response in some circumstances.
With Node.js:
npm install puppeteer node-fetch@2.6.7
Create this main.js:
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer");
const fetch = require("node-fetch");
(async function() {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless:false});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.setRequestInterception(true);
page.on('request', async (request) => {
let url = request.url().replace(/\/$/g, ""); // remove trailing slash from urls
console.log("REQUEST:", url);
let originalContent = await fetch(url).then(r => r.text()); // TODO: Pass request headers here for more accurate response (still not perfect, but more likely to be the same as the "actual" response)
if(url === "https://example.com") {
request.respond({
status: 200,
contentType: 'text/html; charset=utf-8', // For JS files: 'application/javascript; charset=utf-8'
body: originalContent.replace(/example/gi, "TESTING123"),
});
} else {
request.continue();
}
});
await page.goto("https://example.com");
})();