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This is regarding retrieving data from Mr.Robot

When I used the inspect element tool to investigate the traffic I was getting from the site via the network panel, here's a sample of the data I got enter image description here

Does anyone know where I can find the data that corresponds to the video(tv episode)?

I saw that the file format of xhr represents the XMLHttpRequest so that is a combination of my browser requesting JSON, HTML, and XML from the web server? (Can someone confirm this as well)

I am trying to find a type that corresponds to one of these but having no luck.

I am doing this to enhance my knowledge of web and network engineering.

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committedandroider
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1 Answers1

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In the network tab, if you select to see the headers tab, you can see this information:

Request URL:http://api.massrelevance.com/usadigitalapps/mr-robot-tag-mrrobot.json?limit=5&since_id=1039088770827352555_891624285

Here, you can see it's a request to a JSON file. :D

enter image description here

EDIT: Try going to this URL when the video is not playing in the browser (for some reason, when I had the page loaded this was returning as blank): 

http://api.massrelevance.com/usadigitalapps/mr-robot-tag-mrrobot.json?limit=5&since_id=1039263408306586885_20082880

That was the request mine was making. In there, you can find a video URL:

https:\/\/scontent.cdninstagram.com\/hphotos-xaf1\/t50.2886-16\/11765169_875397039210031_1586195986_n.mp4

Remove the \ and you'll see the video :D

Termato
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  • How do you know the file contains the actual video data and not metadata or something else? – committedandroider Jul 28 '15 at 18:35
  • I updated my answer with some more information. You can also look at the console, you can see that there is a WARN output on each of these request. Here you can see it sets the bitrate. Depending on the bitrate, you can see it switched feeds. – Termato Jul 28 '15 at 19:19
  • Thanks! I went to that URL. It was a short clip of 15 seconds. Wouldn't this be a clip that someone shared on the site, not the video itself? The video itself is 45 minutes long. – committedandroider Jul 29 '15 at 00:30
  • The request is being made to the server every 2-3 seconds. I'm guessing that it updates the feed based on your bitrate and downloads a 15 second clip based on that. If you get the URLs from each of those request, I bet they'll total the full episode. – Termato Jul 29 '15 at 16:43
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    Yeah made sense. Thanks! I let you know if i have any other questions – committedandroider Aug 07 '15 at 21:32
  • @committedandroider No problem. Glad to help. Best way of saying thank you is marking the answer as correct :) hahah. – Termato Aug 13 '15 at 13:09