Server side monitoring in JMeter with JMeter Plugins

Like may I needed some server side statistics while running load tests earlier I had couple of Ruby scripts which were gathering my required information on server as CSV file I do have webmin configured on the server but I was still looking for something which is bit more tightly coupled with one of the most famous (easy to use) tool for load testing JMeter.

Here is how to do it:
We just needed one thing JMeter Plugins
 Prerequisite: JMeter 2.4+ or above with a JRE 1.6+
 Download JMeter Plugins 

• Unzip it and (refer) 
• Copy JMeterPlugins.jar to  JMETER_HOME/lib/ext. 
• Copy zip files content to the Server(s) you need to monitor
• On each server run JMeterPlugins-HOME/serverAgent/startAgent.sh PORT_NUMBER (refer)
• Run JMeter (create your test plan as usual)
• You will see bunch of extra items in Add context menue's item beginning with jp@..  these are the extra plugins we just added via JMeterPlugins.jar
• Add jp@gc - PerfMon Metrics Collector (refer)
• Configure your parameters (refer)

• Run your tests and see server side info

I have use it on Mac and Linux, it should be able to work with most of the systems since its server side agent is build on top of SIGAR - System Information Gatherer And Reporter

Run Sikuli in (J)Ruby - (J)IRB

I use irb for composing and debugging scripts. Following is what you might need to do inorder to run Sikuli in  IRB:

1. Install JRuby or via rvm
2. Copy sikuli-script.jar to  jruby lib
• cp /Applications/Sikuli-IDE.app/Contents/Resources/Java/sikuli-script.jar $JRUBY_HOME/lib
• For RVM:
• rvm list (to list currently installed rubies)
• rvm use jruby-1.x.x (to use jruby as the ruby implementation)
• rvm info (to print information about the ruby currently being used)
• cp /Applications/Sikuli-IDE.app/Contents/Resources/Java/sikuli-script.jar $MY_RUBY_HOME/lib ($MY_RUBY_HOME points to the current ruby home, in this case jruby)
3. run irb (the irb prompt should list jruby as the ruby implementation, something like jruby-1.x.x :001 >  )
4. jruby-1.x.x :001 > require 'java'                                                                                      
•  => true 
5. jruby-1.x.x :002 > java_import 'org.sikuli.script.Screen'                                                              
•  => Java::OrgSikuliScript::Screen 
6. jruby-1.x.x :003 > screen = Screen.new                                                                             
•  => #<Java::OrgSikuliScript::Screen:0x1dc2dad7>
7. jruby-1.6.0 :004 > image_path='/Users/mubbashir/Desktop'                                                             
•  => "/Users/mubbashir/Desktop"
8. screen.hover("#{image_path}/apple.png") 
• [info] Sikuli vision engine loaded.
•  => 1 

 You will see mouse pointer to be moved to apple icon.

With Auto Completion IRB is just a blessing, specially when you want to try some new library or need to run some snippets:

Similarly in script it would be something like:

to run the script ruby script_file_name.rb Just be sure that you are using JRuby ;)

Sikuli on Selenium- A demonstration of automation using selenium and Sikuli (such as flash uploader)

Selenium 2.0 is just launched, and the excitement remind me that there are tons of selenium related things I need to share with the world.

One of those things is File Upload. File uploads have always been a real pain to automate using selenium.

People have used AutoIt (so have I) to upload on windows only environment. On windows, beside AutoIt, native events  (of webdriver) have worked a great deal for me in the past. 

It becomes a real challenge  when file upload is done via some flash components (components which don't provides hooks from java script to play with files to upload).  

I had tired couple of things but the thing which worked really well was to have type="file"  and send keys but flash uploader and *nix remains challenging.  

Then I stumble across Sikuli. From there web site "Sikuli is a visual technology to automate and test graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots)".

Below is what I have done to use it to automat file upload via flash components on MacOS X. With few image changes we should be able to port it for Linux.

Source code is available at: https://github.com/mubbashir/Sikuli-on-Selenium

See it pretty smoothly uploads the file, but .. It works like a real user and real human user i.e. a real user can only interact with what is being displayed on the Screen. If the browser window dosen't have the focus Sikuli will not be able to find images.

Did I mention that test are written using TestNG, so this can slightly work as demonstration of TestNG on Selenium as well. 

Note: I haven't tried this in head-less mode.