In this step, you will first configure your browser to use VAddy's proxy server and then you will actually access URLs on your web application.
VAddy does not automatically crawl and scan your entire site. Instead, VAddy relies on you to register URLs to crawl and scan in advance through its proxy server. Because you can control which URLs are crawled, you only have to scan the areas of your application that you would like to test; this also speeds up the scanning process. As an added convenience, if you are already testing your site with E2E testing tools such as Selenium, you can immediately register crawling metadata by configuring the browser that plays back your Selenium tests to use VAddy's proxy server.
Connecting to VAddy’s SSH server
Run the following command with the VAddy PrivateNet command-line tool to establish a connection between your web server and VAddy’s SSH server.
$ vaddy_privatenet.sh connectIf this command is successful, it will exit and leave an SSH command running in the background to maintain the connection between the two servers. When you have finished crawling your site as described below, run the following command to disconnect from VAddy’s server.
$ vaddy_privatenet.sh disconnectFor more details on how VAddy PrivateNet works, see this page.
Disconnecting from VAddy’s SSH server
When you have finished crawling your site, run the following command to disconnect from VAddy’s server.
$ vaddy_privatenet.sh disconnect
Browser proxy settings
Check the IP address and port number of VAddy's proxy server by selecting Proxy Crawling from the left sidebar.
Sample proxy settings in Firefox
To configure Firefox's proxy settings on Windows:
- From the Tools menu, select Options.
- On the Network tab, under Connection, click Settings...
- When the proxy settings appear, select Manual proxy configuration.
- Type the IP address and port number of VAddy's proxy server.
It's convenient to add console.vaddy.net to the text box under No Proxy so that you can refer to VAddy's management screens while you are crawling your site.
Crawling
VAddy will start crawling when you pass “action=begin” to the verification file that you installed in Step 1; it will stop crawling when you pass “action=commit” to the same file. The Proxy Crawling screen shows these URLs, which you can copy to your clipboard for convenience.
For example, if you would like to test the server at example.com and your verification filename is vaddy-12345abc.html, you would access the following URLs in order:
- http://example.com/vaddy-12345abc.html?action=begin to start crawling
- http://example.com/index.php?name=vaddy to test the website
- http://example.com/index.php?name2=vaddy to test the website
- http://example.com/vaddy-12345abc.html?action=commit to stop crawling
In the example above, the name and name2 parameters to index.php will be tested.
If you attempt to crawl a site over an HTTPS connection you will see a certificate error—you can safely ignore it.
Start crawling
VAddy will start crawling when you pass the “action=begin” parameter to your verification file.
Crawling: Example #1
In this example, VAddy is crawling /index.php?name=vaddy. You will actually access your own web application's URLs to test them.
VAddy is particularly effective at testing URLs that use GET parameters, such as login screens and other registration forms.
Stop crawling
VAddy will stop crawling when you pass the “action=commit” parameter to your verification file.
Crawling Results
You can select Proxy Crawling from the left sidebar to check your results.
To resume using VAddy's management pages, restore (undo) the browser proxy settings that you configured earlier.