Reading a Soap Response and Passing Values to Other Requests in JMeter

As per the SOA architecture Web services are often designed that one of them is a consumer of the other. This often leads to scenarios where the output of one service is fed to the other to complete an overall business flow.

The provider and the consumer service can be loaded simultaneously by JMeter and performance of the system can be measured under the expected load.

Let us create an example where we will be passing the output value from the response of the first request to the input SOAP request of the second web service method.


Step 1: Create a test plan

Step 2: Add a Thread Group

Step 3: Add a User Defined Variable

Step 4: Add a WebService Request

Step 5: Add an XPath extractor

Step 6: Add a BeanShell PostProcessor

Step 7: Add Second WebService Request

Step 8: Add View Results Tree

Step 1: Create a test plan

 

In the default test plan that appears on opening the JMeter UI (from JMeter.bat in the bin directory) set the option of 'Functional Test Mode' as true. You may also want to add user defined variables. However for this example I will not be using any user defined variable.

Step 2: Add a Thread Group

Add a Thread Group element by right clicking the test plan node and selecting 'Add-->Threads (Users)-->Thread Group'

Add Thread Group

Set the number of threads in the provided section and set the Ramp-up period as zero if you want all the users to be loaded without any lime lag. You can put a time lag between each user request by using the formula: Time Lag=Time/No. of users
You set the loop count to specify how many times do you want each user to hit the web service. If you want to continue loading the web service then you can check the 'Forever' option on the Thread Group element UI.
You can also schedule the load tests by using the 'Scheduler' option provided on the 'Thread Group' UI.

Step 3: Add a User Defined Variable

Right Click on the Thread Group element and select 'Add --> Config Element --> User Defined Variables' to add the 'User Defined Variables' element. On the user defined variables UI screen click on the 'Add' button. Set the 'Name' of the variables and keep the value as blank.

Add User Defined Variable

Step 4: Add a WebService Request

Right click on the 'Thread Group' element and select ' Add --> Sampler --> WebService (SOAP) Request'

Add Web Service Request

Load the WSDL after putting the wsdl in the 'WSDL URL' text box and select the target web method from the 'Web Methods' drop down. configure the server, IP, port, and path.
Copy the SOAP request XML in the 'Soap/XML-RPC Data' text box you provide the path of the file  in the 'Filename' section.

Step 5: Add an XPath extractor

Right click on the 'Thread Group' element and select ' Add -->Post Processors --> XPath Extractor'

Add XPath Extractor

In the Refrence Name section enter the name of the variable that you created in the 'User Defined Variable section'. Enter the XPath query to point to the value which needs to be picked from the XML response. If the value 'TARGET' needs to be picked from the response XML of the format: <ABCD>TARGET</ABCD> then the following XPath query should work:

//*[local-name()='ABCD']/text()

Step 6: Add a BeanShell PostProcessor

Right click on the 'Thread Group' element and select ' Add --> Post Processors --> BeanShell Postpocessor'

Add BeanShell PostProcessor

You can print the value of the user defined variable that you created above using the below script written for bean shell:

print("Beanshell processing  SOAP response");
print("ACQIDD" +${ACQIDD} );

Here the name of the variable created is "ACQIDD" and the value is fetched from ${ACQIDD}.
You can see the value of the variable printed on the command screen that was used to launch the JMeter UI.

Step 7: Add Second WebService Request

Add another webservice request to your thread group element and pass the value of the user defined variable to the input request using the following format:
<value>${ACQIDD}</value>

Step 8: Add View Results Tree

Add a result tree element to the thread group to view the results of the web service requests. After adding the element you can save and run the test plan to see that the output of one SOAP request is read to extract the required value. This value is then passed to another SOAP request. The result tree looks something like this:

Results Tree

Loading WebServices With JMETER

Apache JMeter is a 100% pure Java desktop application designed to load test client/server software. JMeter can be used to simulate a heavy load on a server, network or object to test its strength or to analyze overall performance under different load types.

Additionally, JMeter can help you regression test your application by letting you create test scripts by putting assertions to validate that the application is returning the results that are expected.

 Web Services can be easily loaded and it s performance measured using JMeter. The typical steps for load testing using JMeter is as follows:

1) Create a test plan

2) Add a Thread Group

3) Add a WebSerice Request

4) Apply Assertions on the response

5) View results

Creating a Test Plan

In the default test plan that appears on opening the JMeter UI (from JMeter.bat in the bin directory) set the option of 'Functional Test Mode' as true. You may also want to add user defined variables. However for this example I will not be using any user defined variable.

Add a Thread Group

Add a Thread Group element by right clicking the test plan node and selecting 'Add-->Threads (Users)-->Thread Group'

Adding Thread Group

Set the number of threads in the provided section and set the Ramp-up period as zero if you want all the users to be loaded without any lime lag. You can put a time lag between each user request by using the formula: Time Lag=Time/No. of users 

You set the loop count to specify how many times do you want each user to hit the web service. If you want to continue loading the web service then you can check the 'Forever' option on the Thread Group element UI.

You can also schedule the load tests by using the 'Scheduler' option provided on the 'Thread Group' UI.

Add a WebService Request

Right click on the 'Thread Group' element and select ' Add --> Sampler --> WebService (SOAP) Request' 

Adding WebService Request

Load the WSDL after putting the wsdl in the 'WSDL URL' text box and select the target web method from the 'Web Methods' drop down. configure the server, IP, port, and path.
Copy the SOAP request XML in the 'Soap/XML-RPC Data' text box you provide the path of the file  in the 'Filename' section. Make sure to check the 'Read SOAP Response' check box to ensure that the soap response is read for asserting the results.

Apply Assertions on the Response

Right click on the 'Thread Group' element and select ' Add --> Assertions --> Response Assertions' 

Applying Assertion on Response

Select the radio button 'Main Sample only' in the Apply to section. Then select the 'Text Response' radio button in the Response Field to Test section. Add the pattern to test in the response of the SOAP request. For example if you expect the text '<status>Completed</status>' in the response than you may want to add an assertion to check if the text: "<status>Completed</status>" is present in the response.

View Results

We can view the results of the tests in multiple format, such as Graph, Table or Tree structure. The results can also be stored in files at a specified location. In our case we will be using 'Graph Results' and 'View Results Tree' elements.

Graph Results element can be added from 'Add-->Listeners-->Graph Results' and View results tree element can be added at 'Add-->Listeners-->View Results Tree'.

Adding Graph Results

Provide location of the results file in the 'Filename' section. You can create a new results file and point its location in the 'Filename' section.

You can now run the test and see the Graph and Results Tree as follows:

Graph Results

The result tree is displayed as follows:

Results Tree

Now you may want to pass the output from one request to the input of the next request.