Generating an HTTP Request

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

To observe the raw HTTP traffic between a browser and IIS, use WFetch. Commonly, you might use WFetch when a user receives an HTTP 403-Forbidden error. In such a situation, you might begin troubleshooting by checking the access control list (ACL) configuration on the requested content. If that does not reveal the cause, you most likely would start troubleshooting the problem as an authentication problem. However, the 403 message indicates that these are the wrong actions to take. Disabling friendly HTTP error messages in Internet Explorer and re-trying the request with WFetch would have yielded a much more meaningful error: Directory Listing Denied. This virtual directory does not allow contents to be listed. You would then immediately realize that Directory Browsing is disallowed for that virtual directory and that either Default Documents is disabled or it is enabled, but none of the configured documents are present in that directory.

To generate a simple HTTP request using WFetch

1. Start WFetch.

2. From the Verb list box, click GET.

3. In the Host box, type a host name — for example, www.contoso.com.

4. In the Path box, type the following: /

5. In the Auth list box, click Anonymous.

   The Port, Ver (HTTP Version), and Connect settings can be left at their defaults.

6. Click Go.

WFetch sends an HTTP request to the local instance of IIS and then receives the response. In the Log Output window, you can view the HTTP request and response data. Notice the individual headers in both the request and response, and the entity body in the response. Figure 11.1 WFetch Startup Screen below shows WFetch in the default startup state.