Configuration

On high-level, working with FiddlerCore is done through the FiddlerApplication class and contains 3 steps:

1. Attach to some event handlers, which will be used by FiddlerCore to report information to the application, for example FiddlerApplication.BeforeRequest or FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete.

2. Start FiddlerCore using FiddlerApplication.Startup(FiddlerCoreStartupSettings) method.

3. Shutdown FiddlerCore using FiddlerApplication.Shutdown() method.

The simplest usage is demonstrated in the following code snippet:

using System;
using Fiddler;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Attach to events of interest:
        FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete += session => Console.WriteLine(session.fullUrl);

        // Build startup settings:
        var settings = new FiddlerCoreStartupSettingsBuilder()
            .RegisterAsSystemProxy()
            .Build();

        // Start:
        FiddlerApplication.Startup(settings);

        Console.ReadLine();

        // Shutdown:
        FiddlerApplication.Shutdown();
    }
}

Startup configuration

To configure FiddlerCore, you can use FiddlerCoreStartupSettingsBuilder class, which encapsulates the logic for creating FiddlerCoreStartupSettting instance, which in turn can be used as an argument for FiddlerApplication.Startup(FiddlerCoreStartupSettings) method.

FiddlerCoreStartupSettingsBuilder provides fluent API, for example a convenient usage is:

FiddlerCoreStartupSettings startupSettings =
    new FiddlerCoreStartupSettingsBuilder()
        .ListenOnPort(fiddlerCoreListenPort)
        .RegisterAsSystemProxy()
        .Build();

FiddlerApplication.Startup(startupSettings);

The following configuration methods of FiddlerCoreStartupSettingsBuilder are available:

Common settings:

• ListenOnPort(int): Specifies the port on which FiddlerCore will listen. If 0 is used, random port is assigned.
• AllowRemoteClients(): Allows FiddlerCore to accept requests from outside of the current machine, e.g. remote computers and devices.

Be cautious when allowing remote clients to connect to FiddlerCore. If an attacker is able to proxy its traffic through this FiddlerCore instance, it could circumvent IPSec traffic rules and intranet firewalls.

System proxy settings:

There are a lot of possible systems and types of connections which might have to be modified in order to set proper proxy settings, and the following methods handle only the most common scenarios. For more advanced proxy configuration, see Register as System Proxy article.

• RegisterAsSystemProxy(): Modifies the local LAN connection's proxy settings to point to the port on which FiddlerCore is listening on localhost.
• MonitorAllConnections(): Modifies all system connections' proxy settings to point to the port on which FiddlerCore is listening on localhost.
• CaptureFTP(): Modifies the system's proxy FTP-related settings to point to the port on which FiddlerCore is listening on localhost.
• HookUsingPACFile(): Modifies current proxy settings to be configured using PAC file. On the other side, FiddlerCore serves a PAC file which is used to modify the connection. The default PAC file which is served can be configured by changing the "fiddler.proxy.pacfile.text" preference, which includes the body of the PAC file's FindProxyForURL(url, host) function, for example:

FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.proxy.pacfile.text", "return 'PROXY 127.0.0.1:8888'");

FiddlerCore proxy settings:

• ChainToUpstreamGateway(): Sets the current LAN connection's proxy settings as an upstream gateway proxy. For example, if the application is running in a corporate environment behind a corporate proxy, the corporate proxy will be used as an upstream gateway proxy for FiddlerCore.

  Chaining when upstream gateway proxy settings are configured to use PAC file is supported only on Windows.

• SetUpstreamProxySettingsTo(ProxySettings): Sets the FiddlerCore upstream proxy settings as specified in the passed instance for ProxySettings class.

Other settings:

• DecryptSSL(): Enables decryption of HTTPS traffic. You should have a CertificateProvider loaded with trusted certificate. For more details see Use Custom Root Certificate article.
• OptimizeThreadPool(): Optimizes the thread pool to better handle multiple simultaneous threads. This is often convenient, as each Session is handled in a different thread. Under the hood, this methods uses ThreadPool.SetMinThreads with a value larger that the default one.

Handling events

FiddlerApplication exposes numerous events, described in more details in the Capture HTTP/S Traffic article.

Shutdown

FidlerCore can be shut down using the following method ofFiddlerApplication`

• Shutdown(): Shuts down FiddlerCore, and reverts the proxy settings to the original ones, in case they were modified on startup.

  If there is traffic in progress when calling FiddlerApplication.Shutdown(), some of the background threads handling the sessions may throw ObjectDisposedException or NullReferenceException.

Next Steps

• Register as System Proxy
• Use Custom Root Certificate