Performance test tool that can record without proxy

Question

I'm doing a performance test for a report upload system of a bank on an intranet network. (I have to turn off the internet to access.) Initially, I used JMeter to record HTTP traffic, but then I ran into a problem.

JMeter uses proxy for recording, but when proxy setting in JMeter is turned on, the upload process can't be done, as the server returns some Java exceptions.

The proxy alone is not the problem. I tried to record with another test tool, such as LoadComplete from SmartBear. This program also uses proxy and everything's fine, except that it is too expensive. There's a 1-month license on their website and I would buy it, but when I contacted them, they said there's only license for 3 months or more.

I also tried some other solutions, but they all didn't work with our system:

• BadBoy
• Selenium
• BlazeMeter's Chrome extension

My question is:

Do you know of any other test tool that similar to JMeter or LoadComplete, which can record and send HTTP traffic? I'll try all the suggestions.

Answer 1

In order to upload the file using JMeter as a proxy just drop the file to JMeter's "bin" folder. See Recording File Uploads with JMeter article for detailed explanation.

If you're still looking for an alternative tool, here are some other free and open source solutions (all of them support record and replay)

• Grinder
• Gatling
• Tsung

Remember that in the majority of cases you will need to do some extra work in order to make your script working as recording provides only a "skeleton" with lots of hard-coded parameters which need to be dynamic.

Answer 2

Loadster (disclosure: I'm the founder) uses a browser extension to do recordings instead of a proxy. The browser extension can record protocol scripts (which automate HTTP requests), or browser scripts (which automate real browsers).

File uploads might require a little script editing after recording, since the recorder doesn't access your local filesystem to get the file contents, but generally work with either protocol scripts or browser scripts.

Answer 3

Maybe you can use Fiddler, it also helps with monitoring requests and responses, and it's pretty easy to use

Answer 4

There's The Grinder, but I see it hasn't been updated in four years.

Answer 5

Try Zenoss Core, a powerful open source IT monitoring platform that monitors applications, servers, storage, networking and virtualization to provide availability and performance statistics. It also has a high performance event handling system and an advanced notification system.

Answer 6

You are right that the problem is not with the proxy. The problem is with correlation.

As Dmitri T correctly noted, with JMeter you would need to do some extra work to replace hard-coded parameters which need to be dynamic. This process calls manual correlation. This article explains the challenge of fixing correlation errors in load testing http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/loadtesterrors1.php

Enterprise applications and especially banking applications use multiple dynamic variables such as session IDs, security tokens, etc. Configuring correlation manually can be difficult. Your best bet is to try a commercial tool that performs correlation (or some portion of it) automatically, as open source tools do not have auto-correlation.

If you're looking for a low-budget option, our load testing tool StresStimulus has auto-correlation and has weekly and monthly licenses.

If you're looking for a zero-budget option, try to fix your script yourself in JMeter using Comprehensive Correlation Method which is tool-independent: http://www.stresstimulus.com/blog/post/eradicating-load-testing-errors-2

Answer 7

you can give a try to LoadComplete it's Easy and affordable performance testing tool. It enables you to create and execute realistic load tests for websites and web apps. We are providing test automation services to client and we use Load Complete to create realistic load tests by recording user interactions and simulating these actions with hundreds of virtual users either from your local computers or from the cloud...

Answer 8

You mentioned Blazemeter's Chrome extension, which is what I would try first. Record a script, export the JMX, then update accordingly using the jmeter gui.

If that doesn't work, I would suggest opening the browser's devtools to carefully observe what is happening with each HTTP request (with proxy off). Then re-create/debug these HTTP requests in jmeter gui by hand.