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google-chrome-devtoolssingle-sign-onsamlfirefox-addon-webextensionsdevtools

In the SAML tracer window, what does red text color indicate?

  1. Install SAML tracer and login to a service using SAML. SAML-tracer on Chrome Web Store

  2. In the SAML tracer window, noticed the http GET and POST messages appear in different colors, including the GET messages for SAML. Example: green, gold/yellow gray, red.

What does a red text mean? What do the different colors indicate?

enter image description here

Solution

  • I couldn't find this documented anywhere either, so I dug into the extension's source and CSS. Grey is the default colour, and it seems to only be used for requests which have not received a response from the network: either because they're still in transit, or because the request was handled by the browser's cache. All of the other possible colours are based on the HTTP status code of the response:

    • 1xx (informational response; technically implemented as 0-199) is coloured black
    • 2xx (success) is green
    • 3xx (redirection) is orange
    • 4xx (client error) is red
    • 5xx (server error) is also red

    It would be nice if there was a colour distinction between client- and server-side errors, but you can click on the request and see the actual status code from the response headers.