preserving logs to help debug multiple hops

Recently, I was working on a project where I needed to connect one web app to another.

I added a button on AppA that, on click, gathered up some useful information (e.g., username, session, etc.), and then opened a new window for AppB with that information included as a query parameter in the URL.

From there, AppB validated the session information against its database to authenticate and authorize the user.

As I was developing this, however, I had a tough time debugging one stage where AppB would bounce from one path to another. Each hop meant that I lost all of my network information, so I couldn’t verify that I was sending the right information, or, if I was, where it was getting mangled.

This is when a colleague turned me onto the “Preserve log” option in the network tab - as long as you didn’t open a new window along the way, all of the logs would be preserved.

While this didn’t solve my problem, it made it possible to debug! I was well on my way.