Getting Started¶

This guide walks you through your first complete WebArc workflow: capturing a website locally and replaying it in your browser.

By the end, you will:

• Run WebArc locally
• Capture real HTTP traffic into an archive
• Browse the archived content without accessing the original site

Build¶

git clone https://git.hydrar.de/jmarya/webarc
cd webarc
cargo build --release

Start WebArc¶

For a first run, WebArc can start all essential components at once:

webarc serve

This starts:

• A local server (default: localhost:8000)
• A local HTTP proxy (default: localhost:3000)
• An archive (created automatically if it does not exist)

WebArc will log what it is doing; keep this process running.

Capture a Website¶

To capture content, route traffic through the WebArc proxy.

Option A: Using your browser¶

1. Configure your browser to use an HTTP proxy:
   • Host: localhost
   • Port: 8000
2. Visit any website (for example, a documentation page or a blog).

As you browse, WebArc records the HTTP requests and responses into the archive.

Option B: Using command-line tools¶

You can also capture traffic using tools like curl or wget:

http_proxy=http://localhost:8000 curl https://example.org

What Just Happened?¶

In this short session, WebArc:

1. Intercepted real HTTP traffic via the proxy
2. Stored requests, responses, and metadata in an archive
3. Served that archive back to you through the proxy server

The archive is now a persistent record of what you captured.