Load Testing with Cypress using the Step UI - advanced

This tutorial shows you how to efficiently set up a browser-based load test using existing Cypress tests in the Step automation platform.

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Illustration for Load Testing with Cypress

Test Scenario

In this tutorial, we will use a sample online store application based on OpenCart as our Application Under Test (AUT). The AUT has been deployed at the following URL: https://opencart-prf.exense.ch/

Our first test case, “TC01 Place Order”, simulates a typical user visit to our online store, where the user searches for a product, adds it to the shopping cart and completes the order.

The objective of this tutorial is to simulate 10 concurrent visits by executing this test case with 10 virtual users simultaneously.

The tutorial involves the following steps:

Setting up the Cypress project
Configuring the load test in Step
Running and analyzing the test

The main advantage of Step is the ability to reuse automation artifacts, so if you have already followed our Synthetic Monitoring with Cypress or RPA with Cypress tutorials, you can go straight to Configure the load test in Step.

1. Set up the Cypress project

Clone the Cypress sample project from GitHub:

  git clone https://github.com/exense/step-samples

Optionally, run the Cypress test locally:

  cd step-samples/keywords/cypress/opencart
npm install
npx cypress run --headed

Zip the Cypress project that will be uploaded to Step:

  cd ..
zip -r opencart.zip opencart/

Note: For more information about the project structure, click here.

2. Configure the load test in Step

Log in to the Step Portal, or sign up for free and create a Step Cluster with 10 [java, ui-automation] Agents, following this Quick setup guide.

Note: In this tutorial, we simulate 10 concurrent visits and therefore need 10 Step Agents. You can run plans with fewer Agents, but this will cause the test cases to fail if a free Agent isn’t found.

Once you’ve scaled the Agents, click Open in Step to open the Step application and carry on with the tutorial.

2.1. Upload the Cypress project

Note: In Step, a Plan consists of logical controls and Keywords that encapsulate the automation scripts. In its simplest form, a Keyword can encapsulate a whole test case or workflow.

Create a Keyword for our test case:

Go to the Keywords section
Click on the New Keyword (+) button
Name the Keyword, e.g. Place order in Opencart
Select “Cypress” as the Type
Upload the Cypress project previously zipped to the Cypress project
Enter the filename of the Cypress spec to be executed e.g. opencart.cy.js
Click Save

Image showing how to create a Cypress keyword

Note: Additional info: To learn more about the Cypress plugin for Step, check out our documentation.

2.2. Create the Plan

Create a new Plan using the TestScenario template:

Go to the Plans section
Click on the New Plan (+) button
Name the Plan, e.g. Load test OpenCart
Select “TestScenario” as the Template
Click Save and edit

2.3. Configure the load test

Note: The visual editor is the primary tool for creating and editing plans in Step. We will use this to design the load testing scenario.

For our load test, we will create a ThreadGroup that will execute our Keyword (Cypress script) in parallel to simulating the target load.

In the Controls section of the Component tabs, click on the New ThreadGroup (+) button to add a ThreadGroup child to the Plan.
Hint: Use the filter function in the Component tabs to easily find controls.
Select the previously defined Keyword (Cypress script) from the Keywords section in the Component tabs.
Configure the ThreadGroup with the following parameters:

Number of Threads: 10 (to run 10 threads in parallel)
Number of iterations per thread: (leave empty) (there should not be a limit on the number of iterations per thread)
Maximum duration (ms): 600000 (to terminate after a maximum of 10 minutes or 600'000 ms)

Add a Session control from Controls in the Component tabs. Hint: this forces the creation of a new browser session (and thus clear the cache) at each ThreadGroup iteration.
Add the Keyword “Place an order in Opencart” from Keywords in the Component tabs.

Image showing how to configure a ThreadGroup to perform a load test — After following this tutorial, your plan should look like this

Note: Additional info: For more information on ThreadGroup configuration, refer to the ThreadGroup documentation.

Note: For simplicity, we use only one Keyword for this test case, but in practice, it is often better to split the test case into smaller Keywords and add them in sequence within the Session.

3. Run and analyze the test

3.1. Run the load test

In Step, click Start Execution and confirm in the opened modal.

3.2. Analyze the results

Once the execution has started, you will be redirected to the execution page.

In the Performance tab, you can explore detailed performance metrics:

Image showing performance charts — Performance charts for a more complex load test

There you’ll find all metrics relative to the transactions of your Cypress scripts:

The execution time of our custom command “Opencart_PlaceOrder”
The series related to the different Cypress commands called within our custom command (e.g. “visit”, “contains”)
The total execution time of our Keyword: “Place an order in Opencart”

Note: The total execution time contains the time spent in the script plus the time spent starting the Cypress runner. This is useful for diagnosis purposes. For application performance measurements, use the custom command measurements.

3.3. Review the transaction statistics

At the bottom of the Performance view, you’ll find an aggregation of performance metrics for the selected time frame:

Image showing performance metrics — Performance metrics for a more complex load test

This tutorial serves as a starting point for those interested in performing load tests using Cypress scripts. Step enables you to reuse automation artifacts across the whole DevOps cycle and load testing is just one aspect of it. Further learning and exploration on performance testing, synthetic monitoring, and robotics can be found in other tutorials and resources.

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