Variable setup for jMeter testing
Here’s some info I found while figuring out how to randomize my website testing with Apache jMeter.
User Defined Variables
These are good for static values you might want to globally change in your testing. things like server addresses, usernames, etc.
Properties file
You can also load user defined values into jMeter as a properties file. These can be combined with the ${__P} function to use a default value if no value supplied in the properties.
User Parameters
allow you to define a variable that has a different value per thread.
allows you to define a variable and a list of values, each thread will take the next available value defined for the variable
the ‘Update Once Per Iteration’ checkbox is left unchecked, the expression in the value definition of the variable will be re-evaluated each time the variable is used. So if you have a variable that needs to be evaluated each time its used.. say it includes a time function, that would be very helpful.
Sampler Response
This is the way to use results from past requests to populate the request for the next request. XPath Extractor will allows the user to extract value from structured response - XML or (X)HTML - using XPath query language. By extracting a value you can name it to be referenced later.
Another important part of jMeter test customizations are functions.
User-defined static values allow the user to define variables to be replaced with their static value when a test tree is compiled and submitted to be run. With built-in functions users can compute new values at run-time based on previous response data, which thread the function is in, the time, and many other sources. These values are generated fresh for every request throughout the course of the test.