Enhancing the Test Plan
You have now seen the basic elements used in a test plan. We added a sampler
and some listeners, but as could be seen in the menus on the last page
there are many other
elements that may be added to a test plan. The elements are logically placed in
a set of groups:
|
Group |
Purpose |
Samplers |
These are the elements that send requests to the servers. There are
samplers for these request types:
HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SOAP, JDBC, "Java" |
|
Listeners |
They collect the results of your runs. You can select among graphical,
tabular, single request views. The results can also be saved in a named
file. |
|
Timers |
Used to insert delays between the requests. They are needed to make
your test more realistic. |
|
Logic Controllers |
If the requests you have defined in your test plan should be executed
depending on some logic, then you need the logic controllers. They are
like the if-then-else and loop structures in Java or any other programming
language. |
|
Configuration Elements |
They work with the samplers by adding common information about the
requests. |
|
Assertions |
Let you check if the responses you get contain the expected data or
are received within a given amount of time. |
Let’s add a couple of new elements to the test plan from above.
When many HTTP requests are defined it’d be nice if you could define the
server name, port number, and common path only once. This is what the
Configuration Element HTTP Request Defaults is used for:

For our example we add localhost and port 8080:
Now we can add another HTTP request, namely the "Date" jsp example that’s
part of Tomcat. It has the URL:
http://localhost:8080/examples/jsp/dates/date.jsp. The procedure for
adding an HTTP request was explained above, so I won’t show it again. You don’t
have to add "localhost" to the request—it’s already in the HTTP Request
Defaults element. Due to a bug in JMeter 1.8 you’ll have to add the port
number 8080 though, even if it is given in the HTTP Request
Defaults element. Give the two HTTP requests different names so they can be
distinguished. Your test plan now looks like this:

New on the Java Boutique:
New Review:
Time Management Made Easy with the Quartz Enterprise Job Scheduler
Why not just use the Java timer API? This open source scheduling
API boasts simplicity, ease-of-integration, a well-rounded feature
set, and it's free!
New Applet:
Reverse Complement
Reverse Complement is a simple applet that converts DNA or RNA
sequences into three useful formats.
Elsewhere on internet.com:
WebDeveloper Java
Lots of Java information on webdeveloper.com
WDVL Java
Thorough Java resource at the Web Developer's Virtual Library.
ScriptSearch Java
Hundreds of free Java code files to download.
jGuru: Your View of the Java Universe
Customizable portal with online training, FAQs, regular news updates, and tutorials.
|