Runs a load test on the selected HTTP URL. The API allows for easy integration in your own tests.

Why use loadtest instead of any other of the available tools, notably Apache ab? For simple usage loadtest has a set of basic options designed to be compatible with Apache ab. It also allows you to configure and tweak requests to simulate real world loads. Instead of setting a concurrency level and letting the server adjust to it, with the --rps option you can send exactly 2000 requests per second and see how your server copes.

Using the provided API it is very easy to integrate loadtest with your package, and run programmatic load tests. loadtest makes it very easy to run load tests as part of systems tests, before deploying a new version of your software. The results include mean response times and percentiles, so that you can abort deployment e.g. if 99% of the requests don't finish in 10 ms or less.

Install globally as root:

# npm install -g loadtest

On Ubuntu or Mac OS X systems install using sudo:

$ sudo install -g loadtest

For programmatic access, install locally or add package loadtest to your package.json dependencies.

Run as a script to load test a URL:

$ loadtest [-n requests] [-c concurrency] [URL]

The URL can be "http://" or "https://". Set the max number of requests with -n, and the desired level of concurrency with the -c parameter.

Single-dash parameters (e.g. -n) are designed to be compatible with Apache ab. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/ab.html

To get online help, run loadtest without parameters:

$ loadtest

The following parameters are compatible with Apache ab.

Number of requests to send out.

loadtest will create a simultaneous number of clients; this parameter controls how many.

Number of seconds to wait until requests no longer go out. (Note: this is different than Apache's ab, which stops receiving requests after the given seconds.)

Send a cookie with the request. A pair name=value is expected and sent to the server. This parameter can be repeated as many times as needed.

Set the MIME content type for POST data. Default: text/plain.

Send the data contained in the given file in the POST body. Remember to set -T to the correct content-type.

Send the data contained in the given file as a PUT request. Remember to set -T to the correct content-type.

Recover from errors. Always active: loadtest does not stop on errors. After the tests are finished, if there were errors a report with all error codes will be shown.

The following parameters are not compatible with Apache ab.

Controls the number of requests per second for each client. Can be fractional, e.g. --rps 0.5 sends one request every two seconds per client.

Open connections using keep-alive: send header 'Connection: Keep-alive' instead of 'Connection: Close'.

(Warning: uses the default node.js agent, which means there is a limit of 10 outgoing connections.)

Use agentkeepalive, which includes 'Connection: Keep-alive' and is better performing than the default node.js agent. https://npmjs.org/package/agentkeepalive

Do not show any messages.

Show debug messages.

loadtest bundles a test server. To run it:

$ testserver [--delay ms] [port]

It will show the number of requests received per second, the latency in answering requests and the headers for selected requests.

This server returns a short text 'OK' for every request, removing request processing from latency measurements.

The optional delay instructs the server to wait for the given number of milliseconds before answering each request, to simulate a busy server.

loadtest is not limited to running from the command line; it can be controlled using an API, thus allowing you to load test your application in your own tests.

To run a load test use the exported function loadTest() passing it a set of options and an optional callback:

var loadtest = require('loadtest');
var options = {
    url: 'http://localhost:8000',
    maxRequests: 1000,
};
loadtest.loadTest(options, function(error, result)
{
    if (error)
    {
        return console.error('Got an error: %s', error);
    }
    console.log('Tests run successfully');
});

The callback(error, result) will be invoked when the max number of requests is reached, or when the number of seconds has elapsed.

This is the set of available options. Except where noted, all options are (as their name implies) optional.

The URL to invoke.

How many clients to start in parallel.

A max number of requests; after they are reached the test will end.

Maxs number of seconds to run the tests.

An array of cookies to send. Each cookie should be a string of the form name=value.

The method to use: POST, PUT. Default: GET.

The contents to send in the body of the message, for POST or PUT requests. Can be a string or an object (which will be converted to JSON).

The MIME type to use for the body. Default content type is text/plain.

How many requests each client will send per second.

Use the default http agent. (Warning: will limit the number of outgoing connections to 10.)

Do not show any messages.

The results passed to your callback at the end of the load test contains a full set of data, including: mean latency, number of errors and percentiles. An example follows:

{
  totalRequests: 1000,
  percentiles: {
    '50': 7,
    '90': 10,
    '95': 11,
    '99': 15
  },
  rps: 2824,
  totalTimeSeconds: 0.354108,
  meanLatencyMs: 7.72,
  totalErrors: 3,
  errors: {
    '0': 1,
    '500': 2
  }
}

To start the test server use the exported function startServer() with a set of options and an optional callback:

var testserver = require('testserver');
var server = testserver.startServer({ port: 8000 });

This function returns an HTTP server which can be close()d when it is no longer useful.

The following options are available.

The port to use for the server. Note: the default port 80 requires special privileges.

Wait the given number of milliseconds to answer each request.

The file lib/sample.js shows a complete sample, which is also an integration test: it starts the server, send 1000 requests, waits for the callback and closes down the server.

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2013 Alex Fernández [email protected]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.