A couple weeks ago I was presented with the challenge of testing load on a particular web application and I needed a tool to do nothing but generate page requests. I had been playing with various JavaScript libraries such as Prototype, Moo FX, Script.aculo.us and decided I would try to create a basic web application that used AJAX to generate a number of random asynchronous calls to a web application.
I ended up choosing Prototype, and although in the past I had created my own AJAX code, the Prototype library made it surprisingly simply. I looked over the documentation for Prototype and within minutes I had modeled the framework for my stress tool in just a few lines of code.
The rest was just the basics and although not the most elegant code it was functional and the premise behind "Stresser” was simple. You specify a URL that you want to send HTTP requests to and specify what parameters you want passed. I kept the parameters in what I called a "Parameter Bank” and once you specified the interval it would send a new request you could begin generating traffic. To ensure there was some feedback as to whether the result had changed, I used Paul Johnston’s Javascript MD5 implementation to hash the results and output the size.
Always a fan for writing things from the ground up I must admit I was impressed and sold with the easiness of using the Prototype JavaScript Library. I recommend you check it out.
Prototype (http://prototype.conio.net/)
I would also recommend that you check out Script.aculo.us which has some very nice effects (some of which we recently used on the Codeworx Design Site.
Script.aculo.us – (http://script.aculo.us/)
To download the code for Stresser you can visit:
http://www.codeworxdesign.com/bkn/Stresser-SRC.asp
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