App: WSTerminal
Developer: Ebed Technologies Ltd.
Genres: Developer Tools, Utilities

This utility is intended to assist web application developers in creating, understanding, and debugging their Web Socket based applications. It provides the developer with a clean, easy to use, interface that allows them to communicate with text based web sockets.

While there are other utilities that perform this, including a web browser itself, this utility makes the task much easier, saving the developer time, frustration, and hence money.

The program presents the user with a simpler interface where they enter the URL of the Web Socket based service they wish to monitor, a large screen area where any messages received from the service will be displayed, and a line where they enter any messages they wish to send to the service.

Some of the features that developers will appreciate include the following:

• The application keeps a history of recent connection URLs, saving the user from having to retype the same URL again and again.
• The text field for entering messages to send understands the recent sending history and allows the user to navigate the history via the up and down arrow keys, saving them from having to retype the same messages over and over.
• The area that displays the messages shows and annotates the connect/disconnect messages, the messages that the user sends, and the messages that are received.
• It handles both secured (wss) and unsecured (ws) connections, with a suitable notification, allowing the user to know when things are secure and when they are not.

In addition, for a small fee, further features may be accessed:

• The ability to monitor multiple connections at the same time.
• The ability to automatically "pretty print" any incoming JSON and XML messages.
• The ability to automatically log the communications sessions and to manage and view those logs.

All in all, this simple utility can make life a little easier for the web application developer.

Release notes: