JUNK RUNTAH

Automated Performance Tests using JMeter and Maven

Learning how to write and automate performance tests isnt easy. Perhaps that is why I have never actually wrote and automated performance tests; until now. For my latest open source side project, sass4j, I wanted to start the project with some automated performance tests. Since we were already using maven2, I wanted to find a maven2 plugin that allowed me to write complex performance tests and automate them easily in a continuous integration environment such as Hudson. Since I had heard good things about JMeter and there was an existing JMeter plugin, I decided on those technologies. Unfortunately the path this took me down was rather long and annoying, but I eventually figured everything out and that is the reason I would like to document the steps for others to reproduce in less time.

But first, why would anyone want to spend unnecessary time setting this up? The big advantage I think, is having the ability to compare nightly test results with a baseline and compare them with expectations. If my latest changes caused a major decrease in performance when I only added a few lines of code, then perhaps something is wrong. The second advantage is the sooner a performance issue is found the cheaper it costs to fix it. Think about the change set a developer has to look at if nightly performance tests were ran, compared to finding a performance issue 6 months from when the bug was introduced. With the former scenario, I only have to look at what has changed in the last 24 hours.

Now onto how to actually do this. I had two references in getting this done: The Official Apache JMeter Maven Plugin Site and a blog on AMIS by Robbrecht van Amerongen. Both of which are incomplete, but combined provide enough information.

Here is an outline of what you need to do. End to end this should take you about 15 minutes to setup; compared to the hours I spent I think you are getting a deal. Also you need to think about doing this in your artifactory server or company maven repository and not locally (doing it locally only helps you and not your entire company).

1) Download the JMeter maven bundle I created containing all the necessary artifacts
2) Install JMeter Plugin dependencies
3) Install the JMeter Plugin
4) Install JMeter
5) Update your maven project
6) Create jmx files and run mvn verify

The first 3 steps are necessary because there are specific dependencies the JMeter plugin requires that are not available on any public maven repo I can find, nor is the JMeter plugin.

1) Download the JMeter plugin bundle

• Click here to download the JMeter plugin zip file
  
• Unzip it

2) Install JMeter Plugin dependencies

• cd to the extracted folder jmeter
• run the following mvn commands to deploy the jar files locally. Obviously update the location of your local maven2 repository and keep in mind the file paths are specific to linux. Again do this once in your companys maven repository.
  

1. mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=org.apache.jmeter -DartifactId=jmeter -Dversion=2.2 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=jmeter-2.2.jar -DpomFile=jmeter-2.2.pom -Durl=file:///home/jlorenzen/.m2/repository/
2. mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=jcharts -DartifactId=jcharts -Dversion=0.7.5 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=jcharts-0.7.5.jar -Durl=file:///home/jlorenzen/.m2/repository/
3. mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=org.apache.jorphan -DartifactId=jorphan -Dversion=2.2 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=jorphan-2.2.jar -Durl=file:///home/jlorenzen/.m2/repository/
4. mvn deploy:deploy-file -DgroupId=org.mozilla.javascript -DartifactId=javascript -Dversion=1.0 -Dpackaging=jar -Dfile=javascript-1.0.jar -Durl=file:///home/jlorenzen/.m2/repository/
   

3) Install the JMeter Plugin

• Unzip the maven-jmeter-plugin.zip file that was included in the JMeter plugin bundle.
• cd to the maven-jmeter-plugin folder
• run: mvn install
• This will install version 1.0 of the maven-jmeter-plugin. Its important we install a release verses a snapshot because you dont want your project to depend on snapshot plugins because this could have nasty side effects for building and releasing.

4) Install JMeter
Now that you have the plugin installed you can actually start modifying your projects pom to use it. You first need to install JMeter because we will need a jmeter.properties file, some XSL files, and you are going to need it to create the .jmx files.

• Download and install JMeter

5) Update your maven project

• Under your project create the directory: src/test/jmeter and src/test/resources
• Copy the jmeter.properties file from the JMeter bin folder to src/test/jmeter.
• Update the property jmeter.save.saveservice.output_format in the jmeter.properties file from csv to xml.
• Copy the files jmeter-results-detail-report_21.xsl and jmeter-results-report_21.xsl from the JMeter extras folder to src/test/resources
• Add the following to your POMs build/plugins section
  

<build>
 <plugins>
 <plugin>
 <groupId>org.apache.jmeter</groupId>
 <artifactId>maven-jmeter-plugin</artifactId>
 <version>1.0</version>
 <executions>
 <execution>
 <id>jmeter-tests</id>
 <phase>verify</phase>
 <goals>
 <goal>jmeter</goal>
 </goals>
 <configuration>
 <reportDir>${project.build.directory}/jmeter-reports</reportDir>
 </configuration>
 </execution>
 </executions>
 </plugin>
 <plugin>
 <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
 <artifactId>xml-maven-plugin</artifactId>
 <version>1.0-beta-2</version>
 <executions>
 <execution>
 <phase>pre-site</phase>
 <goals>
 <goal>transform</goal>
 </goals>
 </execution>
 </executions>
 <configuration>
 <transformationSets>
 <transformationSet>
 <dir>${project.build.directory}/jmeter-reports</dir>
 <stylesheet>src/test/resources/jmeter-results-detail-report_21.xsl</stylesheet>
 <outputDir>${project.build.directory}/site/jmeter-results</outputDir>
 <fileMappers>
 <fileMapper implementation="org.codehaus.plexus.components.io.filemappers.FileExtensionMapper">
 <targetExtension>html</targetExtension>
 </fileMapper>
 </fileMappers>
 </transformationSet>
 </transformationSets>
 </configuration>
 </plugin>
 </plugins>
</build>

6) Create jmx files and run mvn verify

• Now use JMeter to create your .jmx files and place them under the src/test/jmeter directory.
• run: mvn verify to execute your performance tests
• run: mvn verify pre-site to execute your performance tests and produce the test results in an HTML report.

If you want to see a real example of this click here. Now the only step I am leaving out is actually automating it which isnt the hard part luckily. All you need to do in Hudson is create a new job and execute the mvn goals mvn verify to get them automated in a CI environment.

Available link for download

Automated Room Escape Walkthough

The Automated Room Escape Walkthrough.  Automated Room Escape Solution.  Here is the full step-by-step guide that will help you solve the game: Automated Room Escape.  This walkthrough contains detailed explanations, tips, tricks, and all the help you need to succeed with confidence.



About Automated Room Escape:  You are trapped inside a room with all sorts of electronics.  The door is locked by a fingerprint scanner so you will need some finesse to escape.  You can play automated room escape here from freewebarcade.com.

Automated Room Escape Walkthrough Starts Right Here!
You start in the PC room:


Look in the dustbin and get a piece of paper.
Open the CD player on the PC, then take the blue compact disk inside the player.

Zoom in on the CD player next to the monitor.
Insert the compact disk.
Open the top by pressing the 5 buttons from left to right

Take the hand glove.

Go left

Zoom in on the car toy.
Open the car and take the battery.

Notice the picture

"Right one is left"
Take the nail  from the top

Go left

Take the torch form the top of the closet.  Hint: From the room view, zoom in once on the closet.  With both doors still closed, zoom in on the top.
Use the battery on the torch to load it.

Take the pen, and pieces of wood from the top of the drawers.
Take the brush form the middle drawer.
Open the closet and take the scissors

Zoom on on the piece of paper
Use the pen to fill it with ink.

Zoom in on the glove
Use the scissors to cut off the thumb

Zoom in on the piece of wood
Add the thumb-part of the glove over the wood

Go left

Zoom in on the box next to the fingerprint scanner
Open the box
Notice the fuse is missing

Open the box with the nail
Take the packaging tape inside.

Go left
Zoom in on the circuit box under the monitor
Take out the fuse cable

Zoom in on the keyboard
Turn it around
Use the nail to open the back cover

Take the silver key.

GO left to the room with the closet and set of drawers
Open the left door of the closet
Zoom in on the safe
Open the safe using the silver key

Take the latent powder.

Zoom in on the latent powder
Dip the brush in it.

Switch on the torch
Now as you walk around the rooms, you will see fingerprints all over the show.
Remember the word "right one is left"
So search for a left hand!  (Thumb on the right)

I found one in the room with the finger print scanner,  3 hands up from the wooden box on the floor.
Zoom in on the left-hand
After you zoom in once, find the left hand again and zoom in
Zoom in once more
Use the powdered brush on the thumb

Zoom in on the packaging tape
Use the scissors to cut off a piece
Use this piece to retrieve the finger print

Zoom in on the piece of paper that you covered with ink
Place the tape with the print on the paper

Use the piece of wood on the print to get the fingerprint of the glove-on-the-wood


Open the box next to the finger print scanner
Insert the fuse cable

Use the wood with the glove on the fingerprint reader

Open the door!

Well done on a great escape.
Hope you had joy using my walkthrough

Available link for download