Site load testing with Locust

Website load testing - an important step in the development and maintenance of web applications. This is the process that determines how a website or applications work under high loads, what bottlenecks and problems may arise and how they can be solve.

Locust is a load testing tool web applications written in Python. Locust provides the ability to create test scripts, simulating user actions to evaluate the performance and reliability of web applications at high loads.

Installing and configuring Locust

The first step to use Locust is to install and setting. Locust can be installed via pip using the following command:

pip install locust

It is also possible to install Locust via Anaconda distribution using the following command:

conda install -c conda-forge locust

Create a test scenario

To create a test script in Locust, you need to create a Python class that inherits from the HttpUser class. In this class you can define a test script that will be used to simulate user actions. For example:

from locust import HttpUser, between, task

class MyUser(HttpUser):
wait_time = between(1, 2.5)

@task
def my_task(self):
self.client.get("/my-page")

In this example, we have created a MyUser class with a test script that makes a GET request to the page /my-page with a random delay between 1 and 2.5 seconds.

It is also possible in Locust to define parameters such as the number of virtual users to be used in testing, and also the delay time between requests. Parameters are defined in special class methods, such as like wait_time or host.

Run test

In order to run a test using Locust, you need to run python file with test script using command:

locust -f my_test_file.py

After launching Locust, you can open the web interface to test performance monitoring. In the web interface, you can set the number of virtual users that will be used for testing, and check the test results in the mode real time.

When testing is complete, Locust provides you useful information about the performance of your application. You can use this information to identifying bottlenecks in your application and optimizing its performance.

In the Locust web interface, you can view the following information:

Requests per second: The number of requests that processed by the application per second.
Response time: Average time taken by the application to process the request.
Number of users: number of virtual users, used for testing.
Number of requests: total number of requests, sent during testing.
Number of failures: number of requests that ended with an error.

You can also write test results to CSV file or database for more detailed analysis. This allows you to determine which requests take the most time, and find out which parts of your application need optimization.

If your application is slow or unable to process enough requests, Locust can help you identify issues and improve the performance of your application. It provides you with information about the performance of your applications and tools for analyzing test results.

Conclusion

Locust is a powerful tool for load web application testing. With it, you can create test scripts and simulate actions users to evaluate the performance and reliability of your web application under high loads.

If you are developing web applications, then load testing should be an integral part of your development process. Using Locust will allow you to make sure that your application works correctly and efficiently under high loads. At At the same time, thanks to a convenient web interface and the ability to write results to a file, you can perform detailed analysis of test results and troubleshoot problems that may arise in the process operating your web application.

#Linux #Ubuntu #DevOps

Installing and configuring Locust

Create a test scenario

Run test

Conclusion

start a project