Chapter 1, Performance Testing Fundamentals, covers the fundamentals of performance testing and the installation and configuration of JMeter.

Chapter 2, Recording Your First Test, dives into recording your first JMeter test script and covers the anatomy of a JMeter test script.

Chapter 3, Submitting Forms, covers form submission in detail. It includes handling various HTML form elements, (checkboxes, radio buttons, file uploads, downloads, and so on), JSON data, and XML.

Chapter 4, Managing Sessions, explains session management, including cookies and URL rewriting.

Chapter 5, Resource Monitoring, dives into active monitoring of system resources while executing tests. You get to start up a server and extend JMeter via plugins.

Chapter 6, Distributed Testing, takes an in-depth look at leveraging the cloud for performance testing. We dive into tools such as Vagrant, Puppet, and AWS.

Chapter 7, Helpful Tips, provides you with helpful techniques and tips for getting the most out of JMeter.

To follow along with the examples in this book, you will need the following:

In addition, for Chapter 4, Resource Monitoring, you need the following:

And for Chapter 6, Distributed Testing, you need the following:

The book contains pointers and additional helpful links in setting all these up.

The book is targeted primarily at developers and testers. Developers who have always been intrigued by performance testing and wanted to dive in on the action will find it extremely useful and gain insightful skills as they walk through the practical examples in the book.

Testers will also benefit from this book since it will guide them through solving practical, real-world challenges when testing modern web applications, giving them ample knowledge to aid them in becoming better testers. Additionally, they will be exposed to certain helpful testing tools that will come in handy at some point in their testing careers.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Append %JAVA_HOME%/bin to the end of the existing path value (if any)."

A block of code is set as follows:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS TEST;
CREATE TABLE TEST(ID INT PRIMARY KEY, NAME VARCHAR(255));
INSERT INTO TEST VALUES(1, 'Hello');
INSERT INTO TEST VALUES(2, 'World');

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS TEST;
CREATE TABLE TEST(ID INT PRIMARY KEY, NAME VARCHAR(255));
INSERT INTO TEST VALUES(1, 'Hello');
INSERT INTO TEST VALUES(2, 'World');

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

./jmeter.sh -H proxy.server -P7567 -u username -a password

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

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