Apache JMeter does not execute the Javascript found in HTML pages

Question

I want to do performance testing and load of my web application using Apache Jmeter. My web app contains major part as ajax calls and javascript code. Unfortunately "Apache JMeter does not execute the Javascript found in HTML pages. Nor does it render the HTML pages as a browser does". How test my web app with Jmeter or is there any best open source tools for this kind of apps.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

JMeter is going to serve as your load/stress testing tool, but it is difficult to use it on web applications that contain a lot of client-side logic.

Selenium is a great functional testing tool for web applications that are heavy on the client-side logic, but it was not designed for load/stress testing.

Depending on your application, you can partition the various testing contexts across a variety of tools. If you need to test JavaScript performance explicitly, then a JavaScript profiler is generally the way to go. If you're testing the client-side business logic, then Selenium will be very helpful here. When you're testing the backend components (database access, middle-tier code, etc.), JMeter is going to be best here.

I tend to use all three tools in various capacities, since I maintain and test an ADF/JSF based application which is very heavy on client-side code. The gray areas are where JavaScript code reads something from the DOM and then submits to a URL. If the goal is to load test the URL in question, you can combine Selenium and JMeter in separate test runs: (1) for the functional testing (Selenium), and (2) by hardwiring the values (test data that would have been obtained from DOM/JS) in a JMeter request sampler.