# HTTP Performance Testing of the Container using Gatling

[](/en/performance/container-http.html.md "View as Markdown") 

For container testing, more flexibility and more detailed checking than straightforward saturating an interface with HTTP requests is often required. The stress test tool [Gatling](https://gatling.io/) provides such capabilities in a flexible manner with the possibility of writing arbitrary plug-ins and a DSL for the most common cases. This document shows how to get started using Gatling with Vespa. Experienced Gatling users should find there is nothing special with testing Vespa versus other HTTP services.

## Install Gatling

Refer to Gatling's [documentation for getting started](https://gatling.io/docs/gatling/reference/current/), or simply get the newest version from the [Gatling front page](https://gatling.io/), unpack the tar ball and jump straight into it. The tool runs happily from the directory created when unpacking it. This tutorial is written with Gatling 2 in mind.

## Configure the First Test with a Query Log

Refer to the Gatling documentation on how to set up the recorder. This tool acts as a browser proxy, recording what you do in the browser, allowing you to replay that as a test scenario.

After running _bin/recorder.sh_ and setting package to _com.vespa.example_ and class name to _VespaTutorial_, running a simple query against your node _mynode_ (running e.g. [album-recommendation-java](https://github.com/vespa-engine/sample-apps/tree/master/album-recommendation-java)), should create a basic simulation looking something like the following in _user-files/simulations/com/vespa/example/VespaTutorial.scala_:

```
package com.vespa.example

import io.gatling.core.Predef._
import io.gatling.core.session.Expression
import io.gatling.http.Predef._
import io.gatling.jdbc.Predef._
import io.gatling.http.Headers.Names._
import io.gatling.http.Headers.Values._
import scala.concurrent.duration._
import bootstrap._
import assertions._

class VespaTutorial extends Simulation {

        val httpProtocol = http
                .baseURL("http://mynode:8080")
                .acceptHeader("text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8")
                .acceptEncodingHeader("gzip, deflate")
                .connection("keep-alive")
                .userAgentHeader("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0")

        val headers_1 = Map("""Cache-Control""" -> """max-age=0""")

        val scn = scenario("Scenario Name")
                .exec(http("request_1")
                        .get("""/search/?query=bad""")
                        .headers(headers_1))

        setUp(scn.inject(atOnce(1 user))).protocols(httpProtocol)
}
```
Running a single query over and over again is not useful, so we have a tiny query log in a CSV file we want to run in our test, _user-files/data/userinput.csv_:
```
userinput
bad religion
bad
lucky oops
radiohead
bad jackson
```

As usual for CSV files, the first line names the parameters. A literal comma may be escaped with backslash as "\,". Gatling takes hand of URL quoting, there is no need to e.g. encode space as "%20".

Add a feeder:

```
package com.vespa.example

import io.gatling.core.Predef._
import io.gatling.core.session.Expression
import io.gatling.http.Predef._
import io.gatling.jdbc.Predef._
import io.gatling.http.Headers.Names._
import io.gatling.http.Headers.Values._
import scala.concurrent.duration._
import bootstrap._
import assertions._

class VespaTutorial extends Simulation {

        val httpProtocol = http
                .baseURL("http://mynode:8080")
                .acceptHeader("text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8")
                .acceptEncodingHeader("gzip, deflate")
                .connection("keep-alive")
                .userAgentHeader("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0")

        val headers_1 = Map("""Cache-Control""" -> """max-age=0""")

        val scn = scenario("Scenario Name")
                .feed(csv("userinput.csv").random)
                .exec(http("request_1")
                        .get("/search/")
                        .queryParam("query", "${userinput}")
                        .headers(headers_1))

        setUp(scn.inject(constantRate(100 usersPerSec) during (10 seconds)))
                .protocols(httpProtocol)
}
```

Now, we have done a couple of changes to the original scenario. First, we have added the feeder. Since we do not have enough queries available for running long enough to get a scenario for some traffic, we chose the "random" strategy. This means a random user input string will be chosen for each invocation, and it might be reused. Also, we have changed how the test is run, from just a single query, into a constant rate of 100 users for 10 seconds. We should expect something as close as possible to 100 QPS in our test report.

## Running a Benchmark

We now have something we can run both on a headless node and on a personal laptop, sample run output:

```
$ ./bin/gatling.sh
GATLING_HOME is set to ~/tmp/gatling-charts-highcharts-2.0.0-M3a
Choose a simulation number:
     [0] advanced.AdvancedExampleSimulation
     [1] basic.BasicExampleSimulation
     [2] com.vespa.example.VespaTutorial
2
Select simulation id (default is 'vespatutorial'). Accepted characters are a-z, A-Z, 0-9, - and _

Select run description (optional)

Simulation com.vespa.example.VespaTutorial started...

================================================================================
2014-04-09 11:54:33 0s elapsed
---- Scenario Name -------------------------------------------------------------
[-] 0%
          waiting: 998 / running: 2 / done:0
---- Requests ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Global (OK=0 KO=0 )

================================================================================

================================================================================
2014-04-09 11:54:38 5s elapsed
---- Scenario Name -------------------------------------------------------------
[####################################] 49%
          waiting: 505 / running: 0 / done:495
---- Requests ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Global (OK=495 KO=0 )
> request_1 (OK=495 KO=0 )
================================================================================

================================================================================
2014-04-09 11:54:43 10s elapsed
---- Scenario Name -------------------------------------------------------------
[#########################################################################] 99%
          waiting: 8 / running: 0 / done:992
---- Requests ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Global (OK=992 KO=0 )
> request_1 (OK=992 KO=0 )
================================================================================

================================================================================
2014-04-09 11:54:43 10s elapsed
---- Scenario Name -------------------------------------------------------------
[##########################################################################]100%
          waiting: 0 / running: 0 / done:1000
---- Requests ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Global (OK=1000 KO=0 )
> request_1 (OK=1000 KO=0 )
================================================================================

Simulation finished.
Generating reports...
Parsing log file(s)...
Parsing log file(s) done

================================================================================
---- Global Information --------------------------------------------------------
> numberOfRequests 1000 (OK=1000 KO=0 )
> minResponseTime 10 (OK=10 KO=- )
> maxResponseTime 30 (OK=30 KO=- )
> meanResponseTime 10 (OK=10 KO=- )
> stdDeviation 2 (OK=2 KO=- )
> percentiles1 10 (OK=10 KO=- )
> percentiles2 10 (OK=10 KO=- )
> meanNumberOfRequestsPerSecond 99 (OK=99 KO=- )
---- Response Time Distribution ------------------------------------------------
> t < 800 ms 1000 (100%)
> 800 ms < t < 1200 ms 0 ( 0%)
> t > 1200 ms 0 ( 0%)
> failed 0 ( 0%)
================================================================================

Reports generated in 0s.
Please open the following file : ~/tmp/gatling-charts-highcharts-2.0.0-M3a/results/vespatutorial-20140409115432/index.html
```

The report gives graphs showing how the test progressed and summaries for failures and time spent.

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