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Local Testing with Network Restrictions

Guide to using Local Testing when you’re behind proxy, firewall or a VPN.

Test websites behind one (or more) proxies

You might have one or more proxies in your network, and you might need to setup the Local testing connection accordingly depending on your restrictions. (Go through this link for downloading and enabling Browserstack local before setting it up)

If proxy is auto-detected

If your internet access is mediated by a proxy server, you can configure the BrowserStack Local application to connect to our servers via your proxy. Follow these steps to get this up and running:

Navigate to http://localhost:45454, and enter your key

falcon login page

In case the network configuration does not require a proxy or is auto-detected, you should already be up and running.

Screenshot showing connection is up and running

If proxy is not auto-detected

If a proxy is a strict requirement and the app is unable to auto-detect settings, you can simply configure your proxy in our dashboard on the next screen. Follow the arrow as it points you to the proxy details section.

If proxy is not auto-detected, configure your proxy on the dashboard

Depending on your network settings, the proxy can work with just a host and a port, or it might need a username and a password as well.

Proxy details focused in Local Binary Desktop Application with username and password in proxy url

If you’re using an MITM proxy

We classify proxies into two types – transparent and MITM proxies (depending on whether or not they inspect the packets passing through them).

If your BrowserStack Local connection doesn’t work even after all this setup has been done correctly, you might be using a MITM proxy – which you can indicate to the application using a simple toggle.

Toggle MITM Proxy button

If you’re using a PAC file

If you have a PAC file (Proxy auto-configuration file) file to configure your settings without any authentication information, you can enter the location of the file in the PAC File option in the app dashboard.

If you have a PAC file then click on show more and add your PAC file name

If you have correctly set up Local Testing but are still unable to load your local / internally-hosted website/assets on BrowserStack, then you are probably behind a proxy.

You can use Local Testing to test websites hosted behind proxies on our remote browsers and devices. Refer to this article to find proxy settings on your computer or contact your network/IT team.

Currently, we only support Local Testing through the following proxies implementations: network proxy (with no authentication or Basic HTTP auth), MITM proxy (with no authentication or Basic HTTP auth) and PAC (Proxy Auto-Configuration) with no authentication.

Note: For Local Testing to work correctly, bypass traffic for bs-local.com in your proxy server. Once you’ve identified the proxy type and settings, follow the steps below to set up Local Testing.

Proxy

Proxies are commonly set up for office networks, remote servers, and/or your local machine. Contact your network/IT team to obtain the Proxy Host and Proxy Port to setup Local Testing for this implementation.

Once you obtain the Proxy Host and Port, follow the steps below to establish a Local Testing connection:

Download BrowserStack Local binary (Windows | macOS / OS X | Linux 32-bit | Linux 64-bit)

Unzip the file to a folder/directory on your machine. Open command-line interface and navigate to the folder containing the Local binary. You can now establish a Local Testing connection using --proxy-host and --proxy-port flags.

BrowserStackLocal --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY \
  --proxy-host <proxy_host> --proxy-port <proxy_port>

If your proxy requires authentication, add --proxy-user and --proxy-pass to the above command.

To resolve all requests on our remote browsers and mobile devices through your proxy, add --force-proxy and --force-local flags to the command. Without these flags, Local binary tries to connect directly for enhanced performance.

MITM Proxy

If your proxy type is MITM (like BrowserMob), you will need the Proxy Host and Proxy Port. Once you have the Host and Port, establish a Local Testing connection by running the following command through command-line interface:

Run the binary using the following command:

BrowserStackLocal --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY \
  --local-proxy-host <proxy_host> --local-proxy-port <proxy_port>

If your local proxy requires authentication, add --local-proxy-user and --local-proxy-pass to the above command.

To resolve all requests on our remote browsers and mobile devices through your local proxy, add --force-proxy and --force-local flags to the command. Without these flags, Local binary tries to connect directly for enhanced performance.

PAC (Proxy Auto-Configuration)

PAC file (Proxy auto-configuration file) is a Javascript function that determines whether a request should be sent via the proxy server.

Once you have the absolute path of the PAC file on your machine, establish a Local Testing connection using --pac-file flag, along with the PAC file’s absolute path.

Run the binary using the following command:

BrowserStackLocal --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY --pac-file <pac_file_abs_path>

To resolve all requests on our remote browsers and mobile devices through your local proxy, add --force-proxy and --force-local flags to the command. Without these flags, Local binary tries to connect directly for enhanced performance.

Sample PAC file

The following function checks to see whether the hostname is localhost, and if so, whether the connection is direct. If the hostname is not localhost, the connection is via proxy.

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
   if (isPlainHostName(host))
     return "DIRECT";
   else
     return "PROXY proxy:80";
}

If you don’t understand the proxy script or are not authorized to make any changes to it, contact your IT/Network team.

Test websites behind a firewall or VPN

With Local Testing, you can test internally hosted websites that are behind a firewall and/or VPNs.

Start by making sure that your machine can access the website on your browser. Then, establish a Local Testing connection if you haven’t already by following the steps listed in enabling Local Testing.

If your Website / VPN / Firewall / Proxy only accept connections from certain IP addresses or Subnet addresses then it is mandatory to enabled “Force Local”. You can enable it in either of the following ways

  1. From Live Dashboard
  2. Navigate to http://localhost:45454, and enter your key and toggle force local on
  3. Use the force local flag if you are connecting via binary as shown below
BrowserStackLocal --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY --force-local

Additionally, you might need to whitelist Secure WebSocket (WSS) connections to our platform (*.browserstack.com) at port 443.

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