Request Diff

Compare two captured transactions in a dedicated workspace with candidate pool, structured sections, and side-by-side or unified views.

Request Diff

Rockxy’s Diff workspace compares two captured transactions across structured sections — request line, host, query, headers, body, and timing — in a dedicated comparison window. Use it to spot regressions, compare environments, or isolate a parameter that triggers different server behavior.

Entry Points

Action	How to Access
Open Diff View (empty)	Diff > Open Diff View… (Cmd+Opt+Y)
Compare Selected	Select exactly 2 rows in the traffic list, then Diff > Compare Selected (Cmd+Opt+D) or right-click > Compare Selected

Workspace Layout

The Diff window is a resizable workspace (default 1240×820) with four zones:

1. Toolbar — Swap Sides and Export actions
2. Candidate Pool Table — dense table of comparison candidates with explicit Left/Right assignment
3. Diff Viewer — the active comparison, showing structured sections
4. Control Bar — compare target (Request / Response / Timing), display mode (Side by Side / Unified), and difference count

How It Works

1. Select two transactions in the traffic list (hold Cmd and click each row).
2. Choose Compare Selected from the context menu, Diff menu, or keyboard shortcut.
3. The Diff workspace opens with both transactions in the candidate pool, automatically assigned as Left and Right.
4. The diff viewer shows the comparison immediately.

Reassign inside the workspace — click the L or R column on any candidate row to change the comparison sides without returning to the traffic list.

Grow the pool — triggering Compare Selected again with different transactions adds them to the existing pool and makes them the active comparison. The workspace accumulates candidates across repeated comparisons.

Manual text compare — open the Diff window empty (Cmd+Opt+Y) and paste text into Side A and Side B panes for freeform comparison.

Compare Targets

Switch between three comparison modes using the segmented control in the footer:

Request — compares request-specific content in structured sections:

• Request line (method + path + HTTP version)
• Host
• Query parameters (one per line)
• Request headers
• Request body

Response — compares response-specific content:

• Status line (HTTP/1.1 + status code + reason)
• Response headers
• Response body

Timing — compares timing breakdowns:

• DNS Lookup
• TCP Connection
• TLS Handshake
• Time to First Byte
• Content Transfer
• Total

Display Modes

Side by Side — two synchronized panes with line numbers. Added lines (green) appear on the right, removed lines (red) on the left. Unchanged lines align vertically across both panes.

Unified — one continuous diff stream with + and - prefixes, similar to standard unified diff format. Optimized for scanning the overall delta quickly.

Content Formatting

• JSON bodies are automatically pretty-printed before diffing for readable output
• Binary bodies show a placeholder: "Binary body (N bytes, content-type)" instead of garbled text
• Empty bodies show explicit labels: "No request body" / "No response body"
• Headers are compared one per line in Name: Value format

Interactions

Action	How
Assign Left	Click the L column on a candidate row
Assign Right	Click the R column on a candidate row
Swap Sides	Click Swap Sides in the toolbar
Switch target	Click Request / Response / Timing in the footer
Switch mode	Click Side by Side / Unified in the footer
Export diff	Click Export to save as a unified diff text file

Next Steps

Traffic Capture

Capture, filter, and inspect network traffic.

Request Replay

Re-send requests with modifications and compare against originals.