Load Testing with Playwright using Step UI

This tutorial shows you how to set up a browser-based load test using existing Playwright tests in the Step UI.

Get Step SaaS for free to follow this tutorial

Illustration for Load Testing with Playwright

Note: This tutorial is designed for users who prefer setting up their tests using the Step UI. For developers, we highly recommend the code-driven approach outlined in the Load Testing with Playwright tutorial.

Note: Git and Maven are required to follow this tutorial.

In this tutorial, we will use a sample online store application based on OpenCart as our Application Under Test (AUT). To implement our load test, we will reuse existing Playwright tests written in Java that simulate a typical user visit to our application under test.

1. Check out the sample project

Clone the sample project from GitHub:

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

Optionally, run the JUnit tests locally:

  cd step-samples/keywords/java/demo-playwright-keyword
mvn clean compile test

Note: The test cases automatically navigate through the “Desktop” and “Components” categories of the website, as defined in the unit tests.

Create the Keyword Package that will be uploaded to Step:

  mvn clean package -DskipTests

After execution of this command, a JAR file named demo-playwright-keyword-0.0.0.jar is generated and located in the “target” directory of the project. This JAR file will be used in the subsequent steps of this tutorial.

Note: -DskipTests will skip the local execution of the tests. If you successfully ran the JUnit tests locally, adding -DskipTests should not be required.

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 Keyword Package

Upload the Keyword Package built previously. The Keyword Package contains the automation steps that will be integrated in our load test.

Go to the Keywords section
Click on the Upload Package button
Select the “demo-playwright-keyword-0.0.0.jar” as the Package file
Click Save

Image showing how to upload a keyword package

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 main tool for creating and editing plans in Step. We will use this to design the load test scenario.

For our load test, we will create a ThreadGroup that will repeatedly execute a task on OpenCart to simulate high loads.

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 Keyword “Buy MacBook in OpenCart” from the Keywords section in the Component tabs.
Configure the ThreadGroup with the following parameters:

Number of Threads: 10 So the ThreadGroup runs 10 threads in parallel.
Number of iterations per thread: (empty): There should not be a limit on the number of iterations per thread;
Maximum duration (ms): 600000: The ThreadGroup should terminate after a maximum of 10 minutes (600000 ms).

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

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

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 Playwright scripts:

The execution time of our Keyword “Buy MacBook in OpenCart”
No custom measurements were defined for this Playwright script sample. You may easily add some, following this documentation.

Note: The total execution time contains the time spent in the script including the time spent starting the browser with Playwright. This is useful for diagnosis purposes. For application performance measurements, use custom measurements instead.

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 Playwright 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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