Harry Testing world!: Performance test using Apache JMeter

Load testing the web applications Using the Apache JMeter:

Download the Apache JMeter - version 2.5.1 (http://jakarta.apache.org/site/downloads/downloads_jmeter.cgi)
Save the zip file to any folder, Unzip the file "jakarta-jmeter-2.5.1"

To start the JMeter, Go to bin folder and click on 'jmeter.bat' Or you can start from the command prompt (/bin/jmeter.bat on Windows)

Name : The name of this thread group. You can give a descriptive name to this property.
Number of Threads (users) - the number of threads created. Each thread represents a single user. Therefore, if you want to simulate a load test with 10 concurrent users, enter 10 as the value for this property.
Ramp-Up Period (in Seconds) : The number of seconds JMeter will take to accelerate to create all of the threads needed. If the number of threads used is 10 and the ramp-up period is 20 seconds, JMeter will take 20 seconds to create those 10 threads, creating one new thread every two seconds. If you want all threads to be created at once, put 0 in this box.
Forever: If clicked, this option tells JMeter to keep sending requests to the tested application indefinitely. If disabled, JMeter will repeat the test for the number of times entered in the Loop Count box.
Loop Count: This property value only has an effect if the Forever check box is unchecked. It tells JMeter the number of times it has to repeat the test.

JMeter can work as a proxy between your browser and server and record a user's HTTP session, mainly to capture the individual HTTP requests, that can be re-played in a JMeter thread group later.
Right click on the Workbench node, Add-> Non-test elements ->HTTP Proxy server
Configure the HTTP Proxy server setup

Port - Set a number that wont clash with an existing HTTP server on your system (set as - 8085)
Target Controller – set to "Test Plan > Thread Group". - When the proxy server records the HTTP session between your browser and server, this setting implies the HTTP requests will be recorded against the Thread Group you created earlier, so we can reuse them later
URL Patterns to include – a regular expression based string that tells the proxy server which URLs to record, and those to ignore. To capture everything set it to .* (dot star).
HTTP Proxy server setup looks like this

Http proxy server setup

To capture the traffic between your server and browser, setup the browser proxy configuration
Firefox browser -> Tools-> Options menu -> Advanced menu -> Network tab ->Settings will open the connections settings window
Select Manual Proxy configuration

Recording your HTTP Session :

In JMeter hit the START button on the HTTP proxy server page
Goto browser and enter the website homepage URL which you want to stress test (www.test.com)
Now navigate your web application, enter data and so on, JMeter will record each HTTP request between the browser in server against your Thread Group.
After recording your website actions, comeback to JMeter and click on STOP button
To view the each thread expand the Thread Group and you'll see each HTTP request made from the browser to server

HTTP Session

Configuring the Thread group for replay:

To capture the cookie and session to track the each unique user session, we need to add HTTP cookie manager, Right click on the Thread Group -> Add -> Config Element -> HTTP Cookie Manager. and move it to the Top of the tree. Adding this element to a thread group allows you to send cookies to the application being tested.
To view the results we need to add the Listeners, Right click on the Thread Group ->Add -> Listener ->View results in Tree, View results in Table, Summary report. these will be added at the end of the Thread Group
Finally Save the Test Plan

Running the Test plan :

The default Thread group will be set to 1, leave as it is, verify the overall test once
To run the test select the Run menu or press Ctrl-R -> Start, while running the thread group, you will see the top right of the JMeter has little box shows the green color, which means test is running, once the tests are complete, the green color will change to gray color.