Tip #14: Advanced test plan structure

Working with JMeter for about 2 years I've come to the optimal (for me) structure of the test plan. It's divided into several suites (thread groups) depending on user type (visitor or signed in user, etc.) and is quite large to simulate real user activity. Complex business operations can be grouped using Simple Controller for better readability of the test plan. Also do not forget about pauses.

Here is an example test plan structure:


Thread Group - Visitor Suite
  Simple Controller - Homepage
    Transaction Controller - Homepage
      HTTP Request Sampler
      ...
  Random Order Controller
    Simple Controller - News page
      Transaction Controller - News page
        HTTP Request Sampler
        ...
    ...
Thread Group - User Suite

  Simple Controller - Sign In page
    Transaction Controller - Sign In page
      HTTP Request Sampler
      ...
  Random Order Controller
    Simple Controller - View User Profile page
      Transaction Controller - View User Profile page
        HTTP Request Sampler
        ...
    ...

Tip #13: Checking for empty variable using IF controller

Sometimes you need to add HTTP samplers with dynamic URL or with dynamic part of the URL which are stored in some variable after HTTP sampler post-processing.

But if Regular Expression Extractor will not find any matching string result variable will be set to default value (empty value in our case). We should test this variable for emptyness before we will use it.

Now if the News page has not any news we are sure that JMeter will handle this situation correctly.

Tip #12: How to add HTTP Request sampler with dynamic URL

If you need to add HTTP Request sampler with dynamic URL that can be different each time from testing to testing you must use one of the Post-Processors offered by JMeter. I usually use Regular Expression Extractor for this purposes.

So, let's imaging that you have "Popular News" web page which contains the links to "News Story" web pages that contains the full texts of news and you want to write a test which will include both "News" page and random "News Story" page.

For this you must include "News" page HTTP Request sampler inside Simple Controller with a Regular Expression Extractor to store random "News Story" page URL to a variable:

Then use the variable with the stored random "News Story" page URL in "News Story" HTTP sampler:

Tip #11: Template for JMeter's recording proxy

If you often need to use JMeter's recording proxy you can save your time by using templates for HTTP request filtering. Just add HTTP Proxy Server element to Workbench, than add regular expressions for URLs of your site like www\.example\.com.* to "URL Patterns to Include" list, add regular expressions for exclusion of some static HTTP requests like .*\.css$ to "URL Patterns to Exclude" list and save this template using "Save Selection As..." item of HTTP Proxy Server's context menu.

Next time you can just open this file in JMeter and you will have ready for work recording proxy.

Tip #10: How to add authentication to Test Plan

Most of websites have user communities and allow users to do some actions like posting comments if they are authenticated on this website. Often the performance of a web page can be quite different depending on that fact if this page was visited by authenticated user or anonymous one. So we need to test theese pages by both anonymous users and authenticated ones. How to add authentication is described below.

The steps are mostly similar to the steps of adding website search but have some small differencies.

First record HTTP/HTTPS requests going to authentication page with login/password form in your browser and submitting this form. You will get Authentication Form Page and Authentication Process transactions. Then you need to replace login and password parameters values by some variables like ${USER} and ${PASSWORD} on Authentication Process HTTP request settings.

After that you need to prepare the text file where each line contains username and password separated by some delimiter character, e.g., comma and add new CSV Data Set Config element like below.

And now all next HTTP requests will be performed by authenticated users.