Continuous load testing with Playwright
Learn how to quickly set up continuous browser-based load testing using Playwright tests in your DevOps pipeline
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to quickly set up a browser-based load test with Playwright and integrate it into your CI/CD pipeline for continuous load testing.
The example simulates online shoppers using exense’s virtual online shop.
See the related documentation for the same scenario, but using protocol-based, instead of browser-based, interactions.
Prerequisites
- Access to a Step cluster: Get started quickly by setting up a free SaaS cluster in the Step Portal, or, if preferred, follow the Installation page to configure your own on-premise cluster.
- GitLab or any other DevOps platform
- Maven (optional): to optionally build and execute the load test locally
Set up the project
Checkout
While you could set up your project from scratch, we recommend to get started with one of the samples available in Git. In this tutorial we’ll start with the project load-testing-playwright
git clone https://github.com/exense/step-samples.git
cd step-samples/automation-packages/load-testing-playwright
Project structure
The project “load-testing-playwright” is a standard maven project ready to build. It contains the following files:
Playwright Keyword
The playwright script automating the workflow of the load test is contained in the class PlaywrightKeywords.java. It provides a single keyword (“Buy MacBook in OpenCart”). Note that for simplicity, this keyword stops just before actually placing the order, so as not to empty our virtual stock too quickly :-)
Automation package with load test plan
The plan configuring the load test is defined in the descriptor of the automation package: src/main/resources/automation-package.yaml. The example simulates 5 parallel users, each placing 10 orders in sequence. As you can see, the specification is straightforward – the complete definition is shown below.
---
name: "load-testing-playwright-automation-package"
plans:
- name: "OpenCart Playwright Load Test"
root:
threadGroup:
users: 5
iterations: 10
children:
- callKeyword:
keyword: "Buy MacBook in OpenCart"
Maven Project
The file pom.xml defines how the maven project and thus the automation package is built and how it is executed in Step.
The section relevant to the execution of the load test is shown here:
<build><plugins><plugin>
<groupId>ch.exense.step</groupId>
<artifactId>step-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>execute-automation-package</id>
<phase>integration-test</phase>
<configuration>
<url>${step.url}</url>
<authToken>${step.auth-token}</authToken>
<stepProjectName>${step.step-project-name}</stepProjectName>
<executionParameters>
<env>TEST</env>
</executionParameters>
<waitForExecution>true</waitForExecution>
<executionResultTimeoutS>600</executionResultTimeoutS>
<ensureExecutionSuccess>true</ensureExecutionSuccess>
</configuration>
<goals>
<goal>execute-automation-package</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin></plugins></build>
These definitions ensure that during the integration-test phase of maven (which is performed as a precondition of the mvn verify command), the execute-automation-package goal provided by the Step maven plugin is run. For more information about the various maven phases, see this reference.
You will need to provide the URL to your Step cluster, as well as the project name and API key (refer to Generate an API Key). In this example, the actual values are referencing variables which are conveniently defined at the beginning of the file. Make sure to adjust these values to your setup.
The other configuration parameters specify parameters to pass to Step for the actual execution (executionParameters), tell maven to wait for the execution result for a maximum of 10 minutes (waitForExecution and executionTimeoutS), and finally, to check that the execution in Step was indeed successful (ensureExecutionSuccess).
Execute locally
During development or for debugging purposes, you can execute the load test locally using the following command:
mvn test -Dtest="RunAutomationPackageTest"
Execute in Step
To trigger the execution in a Step cluster, run the following maven command:
mvn verify -DskipTests
The load test is executed in Step according to the plan specified in resources/automation-package.yaml. The maven project is configured to wait for the execution to complete.
Integrate into the CI/CD pipeline
As the project is a standard maven project, the integration into any CI/CD pipeline is straightforward.
In this tutorial we’ll show how to integrate it using GitLab. Doing the same with any other CI/CD pipeline supporting Maven is very similar.
Create a project in GitLab, clone it, then copy the contents of the sample maven project “load-testing-playwright” directly into the git project directory.
The project already includes a suitable .gitlab-cy.yml:
image: maven:3-openjdk-11
variables:
STEP_URL: "https://your-step-instance.url/"
STEP_PROJECT: "Common"
STEP_TOKEN: "Your Step API token"
MVN_ARGS: >-
--settings gitlab-maven-settings.xml
-Dmaven.repo.local=.m2/repository
--batch-mode
--no-transfer-progress
cache:
paths:
- .m2/repository
stages:
- verify
maven-verify-job:
stage: verify
script:
- mvn ${MVN_ARGS} verify -DskipTests -Dstep.url=${STEP_URL} -Dstep.step-project-name=${STEP_PROJECT} -Dstep.auth-token=${STEP_TOKEN}
You only have to adjust the Step URL, project name, and token in this file. In addition, please
modify the gitlab-maven-settings.xml to include your credentials for accessing the Exense maven repository.
Pushing these changes to the remote repository will trigger the execution of the build pipeline in GitLab, which will run the mvn verify command. This command in turn will trigger the execution of the load test in your Step cluster.
Analyze the results
After execution of the pipeline in GitLab the job report should look similar to this:
To analyze the results of the load test execution in Step, navigate to the execution link printed in the logs of the job:
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