Apache JMeter along with jsf pages

Two days ago i was allocated a task from my team leader to load test our new web application after deploying it on the production environment. We used lots of open source technologies in this application but the main challenge was to configure JMeter to pass the JSF login page that contains a button posts to a JSF action.

If you don't know about JMeter, you may need to read this topic on my blog.

Step 1: Creating a Thread Group with the following configuration:

Name: Schindler Thread Group

Number of threads (Users): 300

Ramp-Up Period (In seconds): 2

Loop count: 2

Step 2: Creating Once Only Controller under the Thread Group with the following configuration:

Name: Schindler Login

Step 3: Creating an HTTP Request under the Once Only Controller with the following configuration

Name: Initial Login request

Server Name: my.server.name

Port Number: 80

Path: /Schindler-web/login.xhtm

Implementation: Java

Protocol: HTTP

Method: GET

Follow Redirects: True

Step 4: Creating an XPath Extractor to extract the view state of the login button

Name: Xpath Extractor

ِApply to: Main sample only

Reference name: myViewState

XPath query: //input[@id='javax.faces.ViewState']/@value

Step 5: Creating an HTTP Request to submit credentials to the jsf login action with the following config

Name: Auth

Server Name: my.server.name

Port Number: 80

Path: /Schindler-web/login.xhtml

Implementation: Java

Protocol: HTTP

Method: POST

Follow Redirects: True

Use KeepAlive: True

Parameters:

j_username : admin : encode = true : include equals = true

j_password : password : encode = true : include equals = true

javax.faces.ViewState : ${myViewState} : include equals = true

login : Login : include equals = true

loginForm : loginForm : include equals = true

Step 6: In the same level of the Once Only Controller create an HTTP URL Re-writing modifier to extract the session id with the following configuration

Name: HTTP URL Re-writing Modifier

Session Argument Name: JSESSIONID

Cache Session ID = true

Step 7: Create an HTTP Cookie Manager to save the session id and sending it along with all the requests

Name: HTTP Cookie Manager

Step 8: Create some listeners to view the results in my case i preferred to use View Results in Table, Graph Results, and View Results Tree.

Table View

Graph View

Tree View

Notes: To be able to survive any problems you face, use Firebug to check the request on your browsers and what are the parameters sent along with the request and make sure that your jmeter requests are configured with the same parameters and values.