A simple selenium load test based on step

This morning I published a tutorial on youtube to help people get started from scratch with selenium load testing, using step as an execution platform. In less than 30 minutes you'll be able to create a script, design a test plan and use step's agent grid to run your selenium scripts in a parallel and massively scalable way.

Here's a link to the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D4PQjdbjMI

The main reason I'm writing this blog entry is that I wanted to publish the code of the script I ended up with at the end of the tutorial, so that people could easily copy-paste it if needed. Other than changing the path of the chrome driver binary, you should be able to use it as it comes.

So here it is:

package scripts;

import java.util.HashMap;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

import step.handlers.javahandler.AbstractScript;
import step.handlers.javahandler.Function;
import step.handlers.javahandler.ScriptRunner.ScriptContext;

public class SeleniumScripts extends AbstractScript {
 
 @Function
 public void CreateDriver(){
  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "path_to_chrome\\chromedriver.exe");
  ChromeDriver chrome = new ChromeDriver();
  
  session.put("driver", chrome);
 }
 
 @Function
 public void SampleKeyword(){
  
  long sleepTime = input.getInt("sleepTime");
  
  ChromeDriver chrome = (ChromeDriver) session.get("driver");
  chrome.get("http://exense.ch");

  sleep(sleepTime);
  
  WebElement el = chrome.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()='Consulting']"));
  el.click();
  chrome.findElement(By.xpath("//h3[text()='Performance Analysis']"));
  
  sleep(sleepTime);

 }
 
 private void sleep(long duration){
  try {
   Thread.sleep(duration);
  } catch (InterruptedException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
 }
 
 @Function
 public void CloseDriver(){
  ChromeDriver chrome = (ChromeDriver) session.get("driver");
  chrome.quit();
  //chrome.close();
 }
 
 @Test
 public void testSampleKeyword(){
  ScriptContext sc = new ScriptContext(new HashMap< String,String >());
  sc.run("SampleKeyword", "{}");
 }

}

One more thing I would like to point out is that I made a mistake in writing my keyword "on the fly" in the video: in the CloseDriver() method, we really should be using the quit() method instead of close(), because close will just close the window but won't terminate the chrome driver process. So in order to avoid leaking chromedriver.exe process instances, make sure to call quit.

Also here's a link to the docs, which essentially guide you through all of this and provide more details. Keep in mind that not all of step's functionality has been documented yet, and that you'll need to explore and poke around if you want to benefit from all of what the platform has to offer. We're available on github and via the contact form of our website if you need help with any aspect of the tool.

I'm probably going to redo this video because I believe I could do a much better job and pack it in a 5 minute clip. I'm also planning on doing another series of tutorials like this like I did last year to get people started with djigger. We feel step is reaching a maturity level which allows us to start producing this kind of content in an effective way, meaning that the APIs have been stabilized, which means that the content will remain up-to-date, and it really is just that easy to get started with the tool now.

I hope this tutorial will help you get started and make you want to join our community, as we believe step really is bringing a lot to the table for whoever wants to do automation in a both effective and elegant way.

Not only are we addressing important technical issues such as scalability, compatibility and portability, and enhancing comfort and ease of use with a modern, central application for our users, but we're providing a ton of flexiblity.

What I mean with flexibility is that if you adopt step, you won't have to build yet another cluster for every new tool you want to use. You'll be reusing our agent technology no matter what simulation engine you've selected. Hell, it could even be your own custom technology you deploy on our agent grid! JMeter wants you to use its own master/slave logic. Grinder wants you to use its workers. Selenium wants you to use its own grid. Etc, etc. And then it's the same problem when it comes to analyzing results. Each one has their own charts, logs, file formats, etc. So it's time we unify and rationalize this mess, and finally work together on one target platform for the execution and the analysis of test results.

With step, we're doing just that. We're bringing that central solution that fits all of our test automation use cases and addresses the challenges that we've come across as a community in about 10 years of experience testing applications together.